(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors. If you
find errors or omissions in the text, please notify [email protected].)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.


ST. HILARY OF POITIERS

ON THE TRINITY, Books XI-XII

[Book 11 translated by the Rev. S. C. Gayford, late Scholar of Exeter;
revised by the Rev. E. W. Watson, M.A., Warden of the Society of St.
Andrew, Salisbury. Book 12 translated by Mr. E. N. Bennett, Fellow of
Hertford; revised by Mr. Watson.]


BOOK XI.

   1. The Apostle in his letter to the Ephesians, reviewing in its
manifold aspects the full and perfect mystery of the Gospel, mingles with
other instructions in the knowledge of God the following: As ye also were
called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one
God and Father of all, and through all, and in us all(1). He does not leave
us in the vague and misleading paths of an indefinite teaching, or abandon
us to the shifting fancies of imagination, but limits the unimpeded license
of intellect and desire by the appointment of restraining barriers. He
gives us no opportunity to be wise beyond what he preached, but defines in
exact and precise language the faith fixed for all time, that there may be
no excuse for instability of belief. He declares one faith, as he preaches
one Lord, and pronounces one baptism, as he declares  one faith of one
Lord, that as there is one faith of one Lord, so there may be one baptism
of one faith in one Lord. And since the whole mystery of the baptism and
the faith is not only in one Lord, but also in one God, he completes the
consummation of our hope by the confession of one God. The one baptism and
the one faith are of one God, as they are of one Lord. Lord and God are
each one, not by union of person but by distinction of properties: for, on
the one hand, it is the property of Each to be one, whether of the Father
in His Fatherhood, or of the Son in His Sonship, and on the other hand,
that property of individuality, which Each possesses, constitutes for Each
the mystery of His union with the Other. Thus the one Lord Christ cannot
take away from God the Father His Lordship, or the one God the Father deny
to the one Lord Christ His Godhead. If, because God is one, Christ is not
also by nature divine, then we cannot allow that the one God is Lord,
because there is one Lord Christ: that is, on the supposition that by their
'oneness' is signified not the mystery, but an exclusive unity. So there is
one baptism and one faith of one Lord, as of one God.

   2. But how can it be any longer one faith, if it does not steadfastly
and sincerely confess one Lord and one God the Father: and how can the
faith which is not one faith confess one Lord and one God the Father?
Further, how can the faith be one, when its preachers are so at variance?
One comes teaching that the Lord Jesus Christ, being in the weakness of our
nature, groaned with anguish when the nails pierced His hands, that He lost
the virtue of His own power and nature, and shrank shuddering from the
death which threatened Him. Another even denies the cardinal doctrine of
the Generation and pronounces Him a creature. Another will call Him, but
not think Him, God on the ground that religion allows us to speak of more
Gods than One, but He, Whom we recognise as God, must be conscious of
sharing the divine nature(2). Again, how can Christ the Lord be one, when
some say that as God He feels no pain, others make Him weak and fearful: to
some He is God in name, to others God in nature: to some the Son by
Generation, to others the Son by appellation? And if this is so, how can
God the Father be one in the faith, when to some He is Father by His
authority, to others Father by generation, in the sense that God is Father
of the universe?

   And yet, who will deny that whatever is not the one faith, is not faith
at all? For in the one faith there is one Lord Christ, and God the Father
is one. But the one Lord Jesus Christ is not one in the truth of the
confession, as well as in name, unless He is Son, unless He is God(3),
unless He is unchangeable, unless His Sonship and His Godhead have been
eternally present in Him. He who preaches Christ other than He is, that is,
other than Son and God, preaches another Christ. Nor is he in the one faith
of the one baptism, for in the teaching of the Apostle the one faith is the
faith of that one baptism, in which the one Lord is Christ, the Son of God
Who is also God.

   3. Yet it cannot be denied that Christ was Christ. It cannot be that He
was incognisable to mankind. The books of the prophets have set their seal
upon Him: the fulness of the times, which waxes daily, witnesses of Him: by
the working of wonders the tombs of Apostles and Martyrs proclaim Him: the
power of His name reveals Him: the unclean spirits confess Him, and the
devils howling in their torment call aloud His name. In all we see the
dispensation of His power. But our faith must preach Him as He is, namely,
one Lord not in name but in confession, in one faith of one baptism: for on
our faith in one Lord Christ depends our confession of one God the Father.

   4. But these teachers of a new Christ, who deny to Him all that is His,
preach another Lord Christ as well as another God the Father. The One is
not the Begetter but the Creator, the Other not begotten, but created.
Christ is therefore not very God, because He is not God by birth, and faith
cannot recognise a Father in God, because there is no generation to
constitute Him Father. They glorify God the Father indeed, as is His right
and due, when they predicate of Him a nature unapproachable, invisible,
inviolable, ineffable, and infinite, endued with omniscience and
omnipotence, instinct with love, moving in all and permeating all, immanent
and transcendent, sentient in all sentient existence. But when they proceed
to ascribe to Him the unique glory of being alone good, alone omnipotent,
alone immortal, who does not feel that this pious praise aims to exclude
the Lord Jesus Christ froth the blessedness, which by the reservation
'alone' is restricted to the glory of God? Does it not leave Christ in
sinfulness and weakness and death, while the Father reigns in solitary
perfection? Does it not deny in Christ a natural origin from God the
Father, in the fear lest He should be thought to inherit by a birth, which
bestows upon the Begotten the same virtue of nature as the Begetter, a
blessedness natural to God the Father alone?

   5. Unlearned in the teaching of the Gospels and Apostles, they extol
the glory of God the Father, not, however, with the sincerity of a devout
believer, but with the cunning of impiety, to wrest from it an argument for
their wicked heresy. Nothing, they say, can be compared with His nature:
therefore the Only-begotten God is excluded from the comparison, because He
possesses a lower and weaker nature. And this they say of God, the living
image of the living God, the perfect form of His blessed nature, the only-
begotten offspring of His unbegotten substance; Who is not truly the image
of God unless He possesses the perfect glory of the Father's blessedness:
and reproduces in its exactitude the likeness of His whole nature. But if
the Only-begotten God is the image of the Unbegotten God, the verity of
that perfect and supreme nature resides in Him and makes Him the  image of
the very God. Is the Father omnipotent? The weak Son is not the image of
omnipotence. Is He good? The Son, Whose divinity is of a lower stamp, does
not reflect in His sinful nature the image of goodness. Is He incorporeal?
The Son, Whose very spirit is confined to the limits of a body, is not in
the forth of the Incorporeal. Is He ineffable? The Son, Whom language can
define, Whose nature the tongue can describe, is not the image of the
Ineffable. Is He the true God? The Son possesses only a fictitious
divinity, and the false cannot be the image of the True. The Apostle,
however, does not ascribe to Christ a portion of the image, or a part of
the form, but pronounces Him unreservedly the image of the invisible God
and the form of God(4). And how could He declare more expressly the divine
nature of the Son of God, than by saying that Christ is the image of the
invisible God even in respect of His invisibility: for if the substance of
Christ were discernible how could He be the image of an invisible nature?

   6. But, as we pointed out in the former books, they seize the
Dispensation of the assumed manhood as a pretext to dishonour His divinity,
and distort the Mystery of our salvation into an occasion of blasphemy. Had
they held fast the faith of the Apostle, they would neither have forgotten
that He, Who was in the form of God, took the form of a servant, nor made
use of the servant's forth to dishonour the form of God (for the form of
God includes the fulness of divinity), but they would have noted,
reasonably and reverently, the distinction of occasions s and mysteries,
without dishonouring the divinity, or being misled by the Incarnation of
Christ. But now, when we have, I am convinced, proved everything to the
utmost, and pointed out the power of the divine nature underlying the birth
of the assumed body, there is no longer room for doubt. He Who was at once
man and the Only-begotten God performed all things by the power of God, and
in the power of God accomplished all things through a true human nature. As
begotten of God He possessed the nature of divine omnipotence, as born of
the Virgin He had a perfect and entire humanity. Though He had a real body,
He subsisted in the nature of God, and though He subsisted in the nature of
God, He abode in a real body.

   7. In our reply we have followed Him to the moment of His glorious
death, and taking one by one the statements of their unhallowed doctrine,
we have refuted them from the teaching of the Gospels and the Apostle. But
even after His glorious resurrection there are certain things which they
have made bold to construe as proofs of the weakness of a lower nature, and
to these we must now reply. Let us adopt once more our usual method of
drawing out from the words themselves their true signification, that so we
may discover the truth precisely where they think to overthrow it. For the
Lord spoke in simple words for our instruction in the faith, and His words
cannot need support or comment from foreign and irrelevant sayings.

   8. Among their other sins the heretics often employ as an argument the
words of the Lord, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and
your God(6). His Father is also their Father, His God their God; therefore
He is not in the nature of God, for He pronounces God the Father of others
as of Himself, and His unique Sonship ceases when He shares with others the
nature and the origin which make Him Son and God. But let them add further
the words of the Apostle, But when He saith All things are put in
subjection, He is excepted Who did subject all things unto Him. And when
all things have been subjected unto Him, then shall He Himself be subjected
unto Him that did subject all things unto Himself, that God may be all in
all(7), whereby, since they regard that subjection as a proof of weakness,
they may dispossess Him of the virtue of His Father's nature, because His
natural infirmity subjected Him to the dominion of a stronger nature. And
after that, let them adopt their very strongest position and their
impregnable defence, before which the truth of the Divine birth is to he
demolished; namely, that if He is subjected, He is not God; if His God and
Father is ours also, He shares all in common with creatures, and therefore
is Himself also a creature: created of God and not begotten, since the
creature has its substance out of nothing, but the begotten possesses the
nature of its author.

   9. Falsehood is always infamous, for the liar throwing off the bridle
of shame dares to gainsay the truth, or else at times he hides behind some
veil of pretext, that he may appear to defend with modesty what is
shameless in intention. But in this case, when they sacrilegiously use the
Scriptures to degrade the dignity of our Lord, there is no room for the
blush or the false excuse; for there are occasions when even pardon
accorded to ignorance is refused, and wilful misconstruction is exposed in
its naked profanity. Let us postpone for a moment the exposition of this
passage in the Gospel, and ask them first whether they have forgotten the
preaching of the Apostle, who said, Without controversy great is the
mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the
Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the
world, received up in glory(8). Who is so dull that he cannot comprehend
that the mystery of godliness is simply the Dispensation of the flesh
assumed by the Lord? At the outset then, he who does not agree in this
confession is not in the faith of God. For the Apostle leaves no doubt that
all must confess that the hidden secret of our salvation is not the
dishonour of God, but the mystery of great godliness, and a mystery no
longer kept from our eyes, but manifested in the flesh; no longer weak
through the nature of flesh, but justified in the Spirit. And so by the
justification of the Spirit is removed from our faith the idea of fleshly
weakness; through the manifestation of the flesh is revealed that which was
secret, and in the unknown cause of that which was secret is contained the
only confession, the confession of the mystery of great godliness. This is
the whole system of the faith set forth by the Apostle in its proper order.
From godliness proceeds the mystery, from the mystery the manifestation in
the flesh, from the manifestation in the flesh the justification in the
Spirit: for the mystery of godliness which was manifested in the flesh, to
be truly a mystery, was manifested in the flesh through the justification
of the Spirit. Again, we must not forget what manner of justification in
the Spirit is this manifestation in the flesh: for the mystery which was
manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached
among the nations, and believed on in this world, this same mystery was
received up in glory. Thus is it in every way a mystery of great godliness,
when it is manifested in the flesh, when it is justified in the Spirit,
when it is seen of angels, when it is preached among the nations, when it
is believed on in the world, and when it is received up in glory. The
preaching follows the seeing, and the believing the preaching, and the
consummation of all is the receiving up in glory: for the assumption into
glory is the mystery of great godliness, and by faith in the Dispensation
we are prepared to be received up, and to be conformed to the glory of the
Lord. The assumption of flesh is therefore also the mystery of great
godliness, for through the assumption of flesh the mystery was manifested
in the flesh. But we mast believe that the manifestation in the flesh also
is this same mystery of great godliness, for His manifestation in the flesh
is His justification in the Spirit, and His assumption into glory. And now
what room does our faith leave for any to think that the secret of the
Dispensation of godliness is the enfeebling of the divinity, when through
the assumption of glory is to be confessed the mystery of great godliness?
What was 'infirmity' is now the 'mystery:' what was 'necessity' becomes
'godliness(9).' And now let us turn to the meaning of the Evangelist's
words, that the secret of our salvation and our glory may not be converted
into an occasion of blasphemy.

   10. You credit with the weight of irresistible authority, heretic, that
saying of the Lord, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and
your God(1). The same Father,  you say, is His Father and ours, the same
God His God and ours. He partakes, therefore, of our weakness, for in the
possession of the same Father we are not inferior as sons, and in the
service of the same God we are equal as servants. Since, then, we are of
created origin and a servant's nature, but have a common Father and God
with Him, He is in common with our nature a creature and a servant. So runs
this infatuated and unhallowed teaching. It produces also the words of the
Prophet, Thy God hath anointed Thee, O God, to prove that Christ does not
partake of that glorious nature which belongs to God, since the God Who
anoints Him is preferred before Him as His God(2).

   11. We do not know Christ the God unless we know God the Begotten. But
to be born God is to belong to the nature of God, for the name Begotten
signifies indeed the manner of His origin, but does not make Him different
in kind from the Begetter. And if so, the Begotten owes indeed to His
Author the source of His being, but is not dispossessed of the nature of
that Author, for the birth of God can arise but from one origin, and have
but one nature. If its origin is not from God, it is not a birth; if it is
anything but a birth,  Christ is not God. But He is God of God, and
therefore God the Father stands to God the Son as God of His birth and
Father of His nature, for the birth of God is from God, and in the specific
nature of God.

   12. See in all that He said, how carefully the Lord tempers the pious
acknowledgment of His debt, so that neither the confession of the birth
could be held to reflect upon His divinity, nor His reverent obedience to
infringe upon His sovereign nature. He does not withhold the homage due
from Him as the Begotten, Who owed to His Author His very existence, but He
manifests by His confident bearing the consciousness of participation in
that nature, which belongs to Him by virtue of the origin whereby He was
born as God. Take, for instance, the words, He that hath seen Me, hath seen
the Father also(3), and, The wards that I say, I speak not from Myself(4).
He does not speak from Himself: therefore He receives from His Author that
which He says. But if any have seen Him, they have seen the Father also:
they are conscious, by this evidence, given to shew that God is in Him,
that a nature, one in kind with that of God, was born from God to subsist
as God. Take again the words, That which the Father hath given unto Me, is
greater than all(5), and, I and the Father are one(6). To say that the
Father gave, is a confession that He received His origin: but the unity of
Himself with the Father is a property of His nature derived from that
origin. Take another instance, He hath given all judgment unto the Son,
that all may honour the Son even as they honour the Father(7). He
acknowledges that the judgment is given to Him, and therefore He does not
put His birth in the background: but He claims equal honour with the
Father, and therefore He does not resign His nature. Yet another example, I
am in the Father, and the Father is in Me(8), and, The Father is greater
than I(9). The One is in the Other: recognise, then, the divinity of God,
the Begotten of God: the Father is greater than He: perceive, then, His
acknowledgment of the Father's authority. In the same way He says, The Son
can do nothing of Himself but what He hath seen the Father doing: for what
things soever He doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner(1). He
doeth nothing of Himself: that is, in accordance with His birth the Father
prompts His actions: yet what things soever the Father doeth, these the Son
also doeth in like manner; that is, He subsists as nothing less than God,
and by the Father's omnipotent nature residing in Him, can do all that God
the Father does. All is uttered in agreement with His unity of Spirit with
the Father, and the properties of that nature, which He possesses by virtue
of His birth. That birth, which brought Him into being, constituted Him
divine, and His being reveals the consciousness of that divine nature. God
the Son confesses God His Father, because He was born of Him; but also,
because He was barn, He inherits the whole nature of God.

   13. So the Dispensation of the great and godly mystery makes Him, Who
was already Father of the divine Son, also His Lord in the created form
which He assumed, for He, Who was in the form of God, was found also in the
form of a servant. Yet He was not a servant, for according to the Spirit He
was God the Son of God. Every one will agree also that there is no servant
where there is no lord. God is indeed Father in the Generation of the Only-
begotten God, but only in the case that the Other is a servant can we call
Him Lord as well as Father. The Son was not at the first a servant by
nature, but afterwards began to be by nature something which He was not
before. Thus the Father is Lord on the same grounds as the Son is servant.
By the Dispensation of His nature the Son had a Lord, when He made Himself
a servant by the assumption of manhood.

   14. Being, then, in the form of a servant, Jesus Christ, Who before was
in the form of God, said as a man, I ascend to My Father and your Father,
and My God and your God. He was speaking as a servant to servants: how can
we then dissociate the words from Christ the servant, and transfer them to
that nature, which had nothing of the servant in it? For He Who abode in
the form of God took upon Him the form of a servant, this form being the
indispensable condition of His fellowship as a servant with servants. It is
in this sense that God is His Father and the Father of men, His God and the
God of servants. Jesus Christ was speaking as a man in the form of a
servant to men anti servants; what difficulty is there then in the idea,
that in His  human aspect the Father is His Father as ours, in His
servant's nature God is His God as all men's?

   15. These, then, are the words with which He prefaces the message, Go
unto My brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father,
and My God and your God. I ask, Are they to be understood as His brethren
with reference to the form of God or to the form of a servant? And has our
flesh kinship with Him in regard to the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in
Him, that we should be reckoned His brothers in respect of His divinity?
No, for the Spirit of prophecy recognises clearly in what respect we are
the brethren of the Only-begotten God. It is as a warm and no man(2) that
He says, I will declare Thy name unto My brethren(3). As a worm, which is
born without the ordinary process of conception, or else comes up into the
world, already living, from the depths of the earth, He speaks here in
manifestation of the fact that He had assumed flesh and also brought it up,
living, from Hades. Throughout the Psalm He is foretelling by the Spirit of
prophecy the mysteries of His Passion: it is therefore in respect of the
Dispensation, in which He suffered, that He has brethren. The Apostle also
recognises the mystery of this brotherhood, for he calls Him not only the
firstborn from the dead(4), but also the firstborn among many brethren(5).
Christ is the Firstborn among many brethren in the same sense in which He
is Firstborn from the dead: and as the mystery of death concerns His body,
so the mystery of brotherhood also refers to His flesh. Thus God has
brethren according to His flesh, for the Word became flesh and dwelt
amongst us(6): but the Only-begotten Son, unique as the Only-begotten, has
no brethren.

   16. By assuming flesh, however, He acquired our nature in our totality,
and became all that we are, but did not lose that which He was before. Both
before by His heavenly origin, and now by His earthly constitution, God is
His Father. By His earthly constitution God is His Father, since all things
are from God the Father, and God is Father to all things, since from Him
and in Him are all things. But to the Only-begotten God, God is Father, not
only because the Word became flesh; His Fatherhood extends also to Him Who
was, as God the Word, with God in the beginning. Thus, when the Word became
flesh, God was His Father both by the birth of God the Word, and by the
constitution of His flesh: for God is the Father of all flesh, though not
in the same way that He is Father to God the Word. But God the Word, though
He did not cease to be God, really did become flesh: and while He thus
dwelt He was still truly the Word, just as when the Word became flesh He
was still truly God as well as man. For to 'dwell' can only be said of one
who abides in something: and to become flesh' of one who is born. He dwelt
among us; that is, He assumed our flesh. The Word became flesh and dwelt
among us; that is, He was God in the reality of our body. If Christ Jesus,
the man according to the flesh, robbed God the Word of the divine nature,
or was not according to the mystery of godliness also God the Word, then it
reduces His nature to our level that God is His Father, and our Father, His
God and our God. But if God the Word, when He became the man Christ Jesus,
did not cease to be God the Word, then God is at the same time His Father
and ours, His God and ours, only in respect of that nature, by which the
Word is our brother, and the message to His brethren, I ascend unto My
Father and your Father, and My God and your God, is not that of the Only-
begotten God the Word, but of the Word made flesh.

   17. The Apostle here speaks in carefully guarded words, which by their
definiteness can give no occasion to the ungodly. We have seen that the
Evangelist makes the Lord use the word 'Brethren' in the preface to the
message, thus signifying that the whole message, being addressed to His
brethren, refers to His fellowship in that nature which makes Him their
brother. Thus he makes manifest that the mystery of godliness, which is
here proclaimed, is no degradation of His divinity. The community with Him,
by which God is our Father and His, our God and His, exists in regard to
the Dispensation of the flesh: we are counted His brethren, because He was
born into the body. No one disputes that God the Father is also the God of
our Lord Jesus Christ, but this reverent confession offers no occasion for
irreverence. God is His God but not as possessing a different order of
divinity from His. He was begotten God of the Father, and born a servant by
the Dispensation: and so God is His Father because He is God of God, and
God is His God, because He is flesh of the Virgin. All this the Apostle
confirms in one short and decisive sentence, Making mention of you in my
prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation(7). When he speaks of Him
as Jesus Christ, he mentions His God: when his theme is the glory of
Christ, he calls God His Father. To Christ, as having glory, God is Father:
to Christ, as being Jesus, God is God. For the angel, when speaking of
Christ the Lord, Who should be born of Mary, calls Him by the name
'Jesus(8):' but to the prophets Christ the Lord is 'Spirit(9).' The
Apostle's words in this passage seem to many, on account of the Latin,
somewhat obscure, for Latin has no articles, which the beautiful and
logical usage of Greek employs. The Greek runs, ho Theo`s tou^ Kuri'ou
hhmw^n Ihsou^ Christou^, ho path`r th^s do'xhs, which we might translate
into Latin, if the usage of the article were permitted, 'Ille Deus illius
Domini nostri Jesu Christi, ille pater illius claritatis' (The God of the
Lord [of us] Jesus Christ, the Father of the glory). In this form 'The God
of the Jesus Christ,' and 'the Father of the glory,' the  sentence
expresses, so far as we can comprehend them, certain truths of His nature.
Where the glory of Christ is concerned, God is His Father; where Christ is
Jesus, there the Father is His God. In the Dispensation by which He is a
servant, He has as God Him Whom, in the glory by which He is God, He has as
Father.

   18. Time and the lapse of ages make no difference to a Spirit(1).
Christ is one and the same Christ, whether in the body, or abiding by the
Spirit in the prophets. Speaking through the mouth of the holy Patriarch
David, He says, Thy God, O God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness
above Thy fellows(2), which refers to no less a mystery than the
Dispensation of His assumption of flesh. He, Who now sends the message to
His brethren that their Father is His Father, and their God His God,
announced Himself then as anointed by His God above His fellows. No one is
fellow to the Only-begotten Christ, God the Word: but we know that we are
His fellows by the assumption which made Him flesh. That anointing did not
exalt the blessed and incorruptible Begotten Who abides in the nature of
God, but it established the mystery of His body, and sanctified the manhood
which He assumed. To this the Apostle Peter witnesses, Of a truth in this
city were they gathered together against Thy holy Son Jesus, Whom Thou
didst anoint(3): and on another occasion, Ye know that the saying was
published through all Judaea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism
which John preached: even Jesus of Nazareth, how that God anointed Him with
the Holy Ghost and with power(4). Jesus was anointed, therefore, that the
mystery of the regeneration of flesh might be accomplished. Nor are we left
in doubt how He was thus anointed with the Spirit of God and with power,
when we listen to the Father's voice, as it spoke when He came up out of
the Jordan, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee(5). Thus is
testified the sanctification of His flesh, and in this testimony we must
recognise His anointing with the power of the Spirit.

   19. But the Word was God, and with God in the beginning, and therefore
the anointing could neither be related nor explained, if it referred to
that nature, of which we are told nothing, except that it was in the
beginning. And in fact He Who was God had no need to anoint Himself with
the Spirit and power of God, when He was Himself the Spirit and power of
God. So He, being God, was anointed by His God above His fellows. And,
although there were many Christs (i.e. anointed persons) according to the
Law before the Dispensation of the flesh, yet Christ, Who was anointed
above His fellows, came after them, for He was preferred above His anointed
fellows. Accordingly, the words of the prophecy bring out the fact that the
anointing took place in time, and comparatively late in time. Thou hast
loved righteousness and hated iniquity: therefore Thy God, O God, hath
anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. Now, a fact which
follows later upon other facts, cannot be dated before them. That a reward
be deserved postulates as a prior condition the existence of one who can
deserve it, for merit earned implies that there has been one capable of
acquiring it. If, therefore, we attribute the birth of the Only-begotten
God to this anointing, which is His reward for loving righteousness and
hating iniquity, we shall be regarding Him not as born, but as promoted by
unction, to be the Only-begotten God. But then we imply that He advanced
with gradual progress and promotion to perfect divinity, and that He was
not born God, but afterwards for His merit anointed God. Thus we shall make
Christ as God Himself conditioned, whereas He is the final cause of all
conditions; and what becomes then of the Apostle's words, All things are
through Him and in Him, and He is before all, and in Him all things
consist(6)? The Lord Jesus Christ was not deified because of anything, or
by means of anything, but was born God: God by origin, not promoted to
divinity for any cause after His birth, but as the Son; and one in kind
with God because begotten of Him. His anointing then, though it is the
result of a cause, did not enhance that in Him, which could not be made
more perfect. It concerned that part of Him which was to be made perfect
through the perfection of the Mystery: that is, our manhood was sanctified
in Christ by unction. If then the prophet here also teaches us the
dispensation of the servant, for which Christ is anointed by His God above
His fellows, and that because He loved righteousness and hated iniquity,
then surely the words of the prophet must refer to that nature in Christ,
by which He has fellows through His assumption of flesh. Can we doubt this
when we note how carefully the Spirit of prophecy chooses His words? God is
anointed by His God; that is, in His own nature He is God, but in the
dispensation of the anointing God is His God. God is anointed: but tell me,
is that Word anointed, Who was God in the beginning? Manifestly not, for
the anointing comes after His divine birth. It was then not the begotten
Word, God with God in the beginning, Who was anointed, but that nature in
God which came to Him through the dispensation later than His divinity(7):
and when His God anointed Him, He anointed in Him the whole nature of the
servant, which He assumed in the mystery of His flesh.

   20. Let no one then defile with his godless interpretations the mystery
of great godliness which was manifested in the flesh, or reckon himself
equal to the Only-begotten in respect of His divine substance. Let Him be
our brother and our fellow, inasmuch as the Word made flesh dwelt among us,
inasmuch as the man Jesus Christ is Mediator between God and man. Let Him,
after the manner of servants, have a common Father and a common God with
us, and as anointed above His fellows, let Him be of the same nature as His
anointed fellows, though His be an unction of special privilege. In the
mystery of the Mediatorship let Him be at once very man and very God,
Himself God of God, but having a common Father and God with us in that
community by which He is our brother.

   21. But perhaps that subjection, that delivering of the kingdom, and
lastly that end betoken the dissolution of His nature, or the loss of His
power, or the enfeebling of His divinity. Many argue thus: Christ is
included in the common subjection of all to God, and by the condition of
subjection loses His divinity: He surrenders His Kingdom, therefore He is
no longer King: the end which overtakes Him entails as its consequence the
loss of His power.

   22. It will not be out of place here if we review the full meaning of
the Apostle's teaching upon this subject. Let us take, then, each single
sentence and expound it, that we may grasp the entire Mystery by
comprehending it in its fulness. The words of the Apostle are, For since by
man came death by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in
Adam all die, so also in Christ are all made alive. But each in his own
order: Christ the firstfruits, then they that are Christ's at His coming.
Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered the Kingdom to God, even
the Father, when He shall have emptied all authority and all power. For He
must reign until He put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that
shall be conquered is death. But when He saith, All things are put in
subjection, He is excepted Who did subject all things unto Him. But when
all things have been subjected to Him, then shall He also Himself be
subjected to Him, that did subject all things unto Him, that God may be all
in all(8).

   23. The Apostle who was chosen not of then nor through man, but through
Jesus Christ, to be the teacher of the Gentiles(9), expounds in language as
express as he can command the secrets of the heavenly Dispensations. He who
had been caught up into the third heaven and had heard unspeakable
words(1), reveals to the perception of human understanding as much as human
nature can receive. But he does not forget that there are things which
cannot be understood in the moment of hearing. The infirmity of man needs
time to review before the true and perfect tribunal of the mind, that which
is poured indiscriminately into the ears. Comprehension follows the spoken
words more slowly than hearing, for it is the ear which hears, but the
reason which understands, though it is God Who reveals the inner meaning to
those who seek it. We learn this from the words written among many other
exhortations to Timothy, the disciple instructed from a babe in the Holy
Scriptures by the glorious faith of his grandmother and mother(2):
Understand what I say, for the Lord shall give thee understanding in all
things(3). The exhortation to understand is prompted by the difficulty of
understanding. But God's gift of understanding is the reward of faith, for
through faith the infirmity of sense is recompensed with the gift of
revelation. Timothy, that 'man of God' as the Apostle witnesses of him(4),
Paul's true child in the faith(5), is exhorted to understand because the
Lord will give him understanding in all things: let us, therefore, knowing
that the Lord will grant us understanding in all things, remember that the
Apostle exhorts us also to understand.

   24. And if, by an error incident to human nature, we be clinging to
some preconception of our own, let us not reject the advance in knowledge
through the gift of revelation. If we have hitherto used only our own
judgment, let that not make us ashamed to change its decisions for the
better. Guiding this advance wisely and carefully, the same blessed Apostle
writes to the Philippians, Let us therefore as many as be perfect, be thus
minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall Gad
reveal unto you. Only, wherein we have hastened, in that same let us
walk(6). Reason cannot anticipate with preconceptions the revelation of
God. For the Apostle has here shewn us wherein consists the wisdom of those
who have the perfect wisdom, and for those who are otherwise minded, he
awaits the revelation of God, that they may obtain the perfect wisdom. If
any, then, have otherwise conceived this profound dispensation of the
hidden knowledge, anti if that which we offer them is in any respect more
right or better approved, let them not be ashamed to receive the perfect
wisdom, as the Apostle advises, through the revelation of God, and if they
hate to abide in untruth let them not love ignorance more. If to them, who
had another wisdom, God has revealed this also, the Apostle exhorts them to
hasten on the road in which they have started, to cast aside the notions of
their former ignorance, and obtain the revelation of perfect understanding
by the path into which they have eagerly entered. Let us, therefore, keep
on in the path along which we have hastened: or, if the error of our
wandering steps has delayed our eager haste, let us, notwithstanding, start
again through the revelation of God towards the goal of our desire, and not
turn our feet from the path. We have hastened towards Christ Jesus the Lord
of Glory, the King of the eternal ages, in Whom are restored all things in
Heaven and in earth, by Whom all things consist, in Whom and with Whom we
shall abide for ever. So long as we walk in this path we have the perfect
wisdom: and if we have another wisdom, God will reveal to us what is the
perfect wisdom. Let us, then, examine in the light of the Apostle's faith
the mystery of the words before us: and let our treatment be, as it always
has been, a refutation from the actual truth of the Apostle's confession of
every interpretation, which they would profanely foist upon his words.

   25. Three assertions are here disputed, which, in the order in which
the Apostle makes them, are first the end, then the delivering, and lastly
the subjection. The object is to prove that Christ ceases to exist at the
end, that He loses His kingdom, when He delivers it up, that He strips
Himself of the divine nature, when He is subjected to God.

   26. At the outset take note that this is not the order of the Apostle's
teaching, for in that order the surrender of the Kingdom is first, then the
subjection, and lastly the end. But every cause is itself the result of its
particular cause, so that, in every chain of causation, each cause, itself
producing a result, has inevitably its underlying antecedent. Thus the end
will come, but when He has delivered the Kingdom to God. He will deliver
the Kingdom, but when He has abolished all authority and power. He will
abolish all authority and power, because He must reign. He will reign until
He has put all enemies under His feet. He will put all enemies under His
feet, because God has subjected everything under His feet. God has so
subjected them as to make death the last enemy to be conquered by Him.
Then, when all things are subjected unto God. except Him Who subjected all
things unto Him, He too will be subjected unto Him, Who subjects all to
Himself. But the cause of the subjection is none other than that God may be
all in all; and therefore the end is that God is all in all.

   27. Before going any further we must now enquire whether the end is a
dissolution, or the delivering a forfeiture, or the subjection an
enfeebling of Christ. And if we find that these are contraries, which
cannot be connected as causes and effects, we shall be able to understand
the words in the true sense in which they were spoken.

   28. Christ is the end of the law(7); but, tell me, is He come to
destroy it or to fulfil it? And if Christ, the end of the law, does not
destroy it, but fulfils it (as He says, I am come not to destroy the law
but fulfil it(8)), is not the end of the law, so far from being its
dissolution, the very opposite, namely its final perfection? All things are
advancing towards an end, but that end is a condition of rest in the
perfection, which is the goal of their advance, and not their abolition.
Further, all things exist for the sake of the end, but the end itself is
not the means to anything beyond: it is an ultimate, all-embracing whole,
which rests in itself. And because it is self-contained, and works for no
other time or object than itself, the goal is always that to which our
hopes are directed. Therefore the Lord exhorts us to wait with patient and
reverent faith until the end comes: Blessed is He that endureth to the
end(9). It is not a blessed dissolution, which awaits us, nor is non-
existence the fruit, and annihilation the appointed reward of faith: but
the end is the final attainment of the promised blessedness, and they are
blessed who endure until the goal of perfect happiness is reached, when the
expectation of faithful hope has no object beyond. Their end is to abide
with unbroken rest in that condition, towards which they are pressing.
Similarly, as a deterrent, the Apostle warns us of the end of the wicked,
Whose end is perdition, ..... but our expectation is in heaven(1). Suppose
then we interpret the end as a dissolution, we are forced to acknowledge
that, since there is an end for the blessed and for the wicked, the issue
levels the godly with the ungodly, for the appointed end of both is a
common annihilation. What of our expectation in heaven, if for us as well
as for the wicked the end is a cessation of being? But even if there
remains for the saints an expectation. whereas for the wicked there waits
the end they have deserved, we cannot conceive that end as a final
dissolution. What punishment would it be for the wicked to be beyond the
feeling of avenging torments, because the capability of suffering has been
removed by dissolution? The end is, therefore, a culminating and
irrevocable condition which awaits us, reserved for the blessed and
prepared for the wicked.

   29. We can therefore no longer doubt that by the end is meant an
ultimate and final condition and not a dissolution. We shall have something
more to say upon this subject, when we come to the explanation of this
passage, but for the present this is enough to make our meaning clear. Let
us, therefore, turn now to the delivering of the Kingdom, and see whether
it means a surrender of rule, whether the Son by delivering ceases to
possess that which He delivers to the Father. If this is what the wicked
contend in their unreasoning infatuation, they must allow that the Father,
by delivering, lost all, when He delivered all to the Son, if delivery
implies the surrender of that which is delivered. For the Lord said, All
things have been delivered unto Me of My Father(2), and again, All
authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and earth(3). If, therefore, to
deliver is to yield possession, the Father no longer possessed that which
He delivered. But if the Father did not cease to possess that which He
delivered, neither does the Son surrender that which He delivers.
Therefore, if He did not lose by the delivering that which He delivered, we
must recognise that only the Dispensation explains how the Father still
possesses what He delivered, and the Son does not forfeit what He gave.

   30. As to the subjection, there are other facts which come to the help
of our faith, and prevent us from putting an indignity on Christ upon this
score, but above all this passage contains its own defence. First, however,
I appeal to common reason: is the subjection still to be understood as the
subordination of servitude to lordship, weakness to power, meanness to
honour, qualities the opposite of one another? Is the Son in this manner
subjected to the Father by the distinction of a different nature? If,
indeed, we would think so, we shall find in the Apostle's words a
preventive for such errors of the imagination. When all things are
subjected to Him, says He, then must He be subjected to Him, Who subjects
all things to Himself; and by this 'then' he means to denote the temporal
Dispensation. For if we put any other construction on the subjection,
Christ, though then to be subjected, is not subjected now, and thus we make
Him an insolent and impious rebel, whom the necessity of time, breaking as
it were and subduing His profane and overweening pride, will reduce to a
tardy obedience. But what does He Himself say? I am not come to do Mine own
will, but the will of Him that sent Me(4): and again, Therefore hath the
Father loved Me because I do all things that are pleasing unto Him(5): and,
Father, Thy will be done(6). Or hear the Apostle, He humbled Himself,
becoming obedient even unto death(7). Although He humbled Himself, His
nature knew no humiliation: though He was obedient, it was a voluntary
obedience, for He became obedient by humbling Himself. The Only-begotten
God humbled Himself, and obeyed His Father even to the death of the Cross:
but as what, as man or as God, is He to be subjected to the Father, when
all things have been subjected to Him? Of a truth this subjection is no
sign of a fresh obedience, but the Dispensation of the Mystery, for the
allegiance is eternal, the subjection an event within time. The subjection
is then in its signification simply a demonstration of the Mystery.

   31. What that is must be understood in view of this same hope of our
faith. We cannot be ignorant that the Lord Jesus Christ rose again from the
dead, and sits at the right hand of God, for we have also the witness of
the Apostle, According to the working of the strength of His might, which
He wrought in Christ, when tie raised Him from the dead, and made Him to
sit at tits right hand in the heavenly places above all rule and authority
and power and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world
but also in that which is to came, and put all things in subjection under
His feet(8). The language of the Apostle, as befits the power of God,
speaks of the future as already past: for that which is to be wrought by
the completion of time already exists in Christ, in Whom is all fulness,
and 'future' refers only to the temporal order of the Dispensation, not to
a new development. Thus, God has put all things under His feet, though they
are still to be subjected. By their subjection, conceived as already past,
is expressed the immutable power of Christ: by their subjection, as future,
is signified their consummation at the end of the ages as the result of the
fulness of time.

   32. The meaning of the abolishing of every power which is against Him
is not obscure The prince of the air, the power of spiritual wickedness,
shall be delivered to eternal destruction, as Christ says, Depart from Me,
ye cursed, into the eternal fire which My Father hath prepared far the
devil and his angels(9). The abolishing is not the same as the subjecting.
To abolish the power of the enemy is to sweep away for ever his prerogative
of power, so that by the abolition of his power is brought to an end the
rule of his kingdom. Of this the Lord testifies when He says, My kingdom is
not of this world(1): as He had once before testified that the ruler of
that kingdom is the prince of the world, whose power shall be destroyed by
the abolition of the rule of His kingdom(2). A subjection, on the other
hand, which implies obedience and allegiance, is a proof of submission and
mutability.

   33. So when their authority is abolished, His enemies shall be
subjected: and so subjected, that He shall subject them to Himself.
Moreover He shall so subject them to Himself, that God shall subject them
to Him. Was the Apostle ignorant, think you, of the force of these words in
the Gospel, No one cometh to Me, except the Father draw Him to Me(3) which
stand side by side with those other words, No one cometh unto the Father
but by Me(4): just as in this Epistle Christ subjects His enemies to
Himself, yet God subjects them to Him, and He witnesses throughout this,
his work of subjection, that God is working in Him? Except through Him
there is no approach to the Father, but there is also no approach to Him,
unless the Father draw us. Understanding Him to be the Son of God, we
recognise in Him the true nature of the Father. Hence, when we learn to
know the Son, God the Father calls us: when we believe the Son, God the
Father receives us; for our recognition and knowledge of the Father is in
the Son, Who shews us in Himself God the Father, Who draws us, if we be
devout, by His fatherly love into a mutual bond with His Son. So then the
Father draws us, when, as the first condition, He is acknowledged Father:
but no one comes to the Father except through the Son, because we cannot
know the Father, unless faith in the Son is active in us, since we cannot
approach the Father in worship, unless we first adore the Son, while if we
know the Son, the Father draws us to eternal life and receives us. But each
result is the work of the Son, for by the preaching of the Father, Whom the
Son preaches, the Father brings us to the Son, and the Son leads us to the
Father. The statement of this Mystery was necessary for the more perfect
understanding of the present passage, to shew that through the Son the
Father draws us and receives us; that we might understand the two aspects,
the Son subjecting all to Himself, and the Father subjecting all to Him.
Through the birth the nature of God is abiding in the Son, and does that
which He Himself does. What He does God does, but what God does in Him, He
Himself does: in the sense that where He acts Himself we must believe the
Son of God acts; and where God acts, we must perceive the properties of the
Father's nature existing in Him as the Son.

   34. When authorities and powers are abolished, His enemies shall be
subjected under His feet. The same Apostle tells who are these enemies, As
touching the Gospel they are enemies for your sakes, but as touching the
election they are beloved far the fathers' sake(5). We remember that they
are enemies of the cross of Christ; let us remember also that, because they
are beloved for the fathers' sake, they are reserved for the subjection, as
the Apostle says, I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery,
lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath
befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all
Israel shall be saved, even as it is written, There shall come out of Sion
a Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: and this is the
covenant firm Me to them, when I have taken away their sins(6). So His
enemies shall be subjected under His feet.

   35. But we must not forget what follows the subjection, namely, Last of
all is death conquered by Him(7). This victory over death is nothing else
than the resurrection from the dead: for when the corruption of death is
stayed, the quickened and now heavenly nature is made eternal, as it is
written, For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal
must put on immortality. But when this mortal shall have put on
immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is
swallowed up in strife. O death, where is thy sting? O death, where is thy
strife(8)? In the subjection of His enemies death is Conquered; and, death
conquered, life immortal follows. The Apostle tells us also of the special
reward attained by this subjection which is made perfect by the subjection
of belief: Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may
be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the works of His power,
whereby He is able to subject all things to Himself(9). There is then
another subjection, which consists in a transition from one nature to
another, for our nature ceases, so far as its present character is
concerned, and is subjected to Him, into Whose form it passes. But by
'ceasing' is implied not an end of being, but a promotion into something
higher. Thus our nature by being merged into the image of the other nature
which it receives, becomes subjected through the imposition of a new form.

   36. Hence the Apostle, to make his explanation of this Mystery
complete, after saying that death is the last enemy to be conquered, adds:
But when He saith, rill things are put in subjection except Him, Who did
subject all things to Him, then must He be subjected to Him, that did
subject all things to Him, that God may be all in all(1). The first step of
the Mystery is that all things are subjected to Him: then He is subjected
to Him, Who subjects all things to Himself. As we are subjected to the
glory of the rule of His body, so He also, reigning in the glory of His
body, is by the same Mystery in turn subjected to Him, Who subjects all
things to Himself. And we are subjected to the glory of His body, that we
may share that splendour with which He reigns in the body, since we shall
be conformed to His body.

   37. Nor are the Gospels silent concerning the glory of His present
reigning body. It is written that the Lord said, Verily, I say unto you,
there be same of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death till
they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom. And it came to pass, after
six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter and James and John His brother, and
bringeth them up into a high mountain apart. And Jesus was transfigured
before them, and His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became as
snow(2) Thus was shewn to the Apostles the glory of the body of Christ
coming into His Kingdom: for in the fashion of His glorious
Transfiguration, the Lord stood revealed in the splendour of His reigning
body.

   38. He promised also to the Apostles the participation in this His
glory. So shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of Man shall send
forth His angels, and they shall gather together out of His Kingdom all
things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and He shall send
them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and gnashing of
teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of
their Father. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear(3). Were their
natural and bodily ears closed to the hearing of the words, that the Lord
should need to admonish them to hear? Yet the Lord, hinting at the
knowledge of the Mystery, commands them to listen to the doctrine of the
faith. In the end of the world all things that cause stumbling shall be
removed from His Kingdom. We see the Lord then reigning in the splendour of
His body, until the things that cause stumbling are removed. And we see
ourselves, in consequence, conformed to the glory of His body in the
Kingdom of the Father, shining as with the splendour of the sun, the
splendour in which He shewed the fashion of His Kingdom to the Apostles,
when He was transfigured on the mountain.

   39. He shall deliver the Kingdom to God the Father, not in the sense
that He resigns His power by the delivering, but that we, being conformed
to the glory of His body, shall form the Kingdom of God. It is not said, He
shall deliver up His Kingdom, but, He shall deliver up the Kingdom(4), that
is, deliver up to God us who have been made the Kingdom by the glorifying
of His body. He shall deliver us into the Kingdom, as it is said in the
Gospel, Came, re blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world(5). The just shall shine like the sun in
the Kingdom of their Father, and the Son shall deliver to the Father, as
His Kingdom, those whom He has called into His Kingdom, to whom also He has
promised the blessedness of this Mystery, Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shah see God(6). While He reigns, He shall remove all things that
cause stumbling, and then the just shall shine as the sun in the Kingdom of
the Father. Afterwards He shall deliver the Kingdom to the Father, and
those whom He has handed to the Father, as the Kingdom, shall see God. He
Himself witnesses to the Apostles what manner of Kingdom this is: The
Kingdom of God is within you(7). Thus it is as King that He shall deliver
up the Kingdom, and if any ask Who it is that delivers up the Kingdom, let
him hear, Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that
sleep; since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the
dead(8). All that is said on the point before us concerns the Mystery of
the body, since Christ is the firstfruits of the dead. Let us gather also
from the words of the Apostle by what Mystery Christ rose from the dead:
Remember that Christ hath risen from the dead, of the seed of David(9).
Here he teaches that the death and resurrection are due only to the
Dispensation by which Christ was flesh.

   40. In His body, the game body though now made glorious, He reigns
until the authorities are abolished, death conquered, and His enemies
subdued. This distinction is carefully preserved by the Apostle: the
authorities and powers are abolished, the enemies are subjected(1). Then,
when they are subjected, He, that is the Lord, shall be subjected to Him
that subjecteth all things to Himself, that God may be all in all(2), the
nature of the Father's divinity imposing itself upon the nature of our body
which was assumed. It is thus that God shall be all in all: according to
the Dispensation He becomes by His Godhead and His manhood the Mediator
between men and God, and so by the Dispensation He acquires the nature of
flesh, and by the subjection shall obtain the nature of God in all things,
so as to be God not in part, but wholly and entirely. The end of the
subjection is then simply that God may be all in all, that no trace of the
nature of His earthly body may remain in Him. Although before this time the
two were combined within Him, He must now become God only; not, however, by
casting off the body, but by translating it through subjection; not by
losing it through dissolutions, but by transfiguring it in glory: adding
humanity to His divinity, not divesting Himself of divinity by His
humanity. And He is subjected, not that He may cease to be, but that God
may be all in all, having, in the mystery of the subjection, to continue to
be that which He no longer is(3), not having by dissolution to be robbed of
Himself, that is, to be deprived of His being.

   41. We have a sufficient and sacred guarantee for this belief in the
authority of the Apostle. Through the Dispensation, and within time, the
Lord Jesus Christ, the firstfruits of them that sleep, is to be subjected,
that God may be all in all, and this subjection is not the debasement of
His divinity, but the promotion of His assumed nature, for He Who is God
and Man is now altogether God. But some may think that, when we say He was
both glorified in the body whilst reigning in the body, and is hereafter to
be subjected that God may be all in all, our belief finds no support for
itself in the Gospels nor yet in the Epistles. We will, therefore, produce
testimony of our faith, not only from the words of the Apostle, but also
from our Lord's mouth. We will shew that Christ said first with His own
lips what He afterwards said by the mouth of Paul.

   42. Does He not reveal to His Apostles the Dispensation of this glory
by the express signification of the words, Now is the Son of Man glorified,
and God is glorified in Him. If God hath been glorified in Him, Gad hath
glorified Him in Himself, and straightway hath He glorified Him(4). In the
words, Now is the Son of Man honoured, and God is honoured in Him, we have
first the glory of the Son of Man, then the glory of God in the Son of Man.
So there is first signified the glory of the body, which it borrows from
its association with the divine nature: and then follows the promotion to a
fuller glory derived from an addition to the glory of the body. If God hath
been honoured in Him, God hath honoured Him in Himself, and straightway
hath God honoured Him. God has glorified Him in Himself, because He has
already been glorified in Him. God was glorified in Him: this refers to the
glory of the body, for by this glory is expressed in a human body the glory
of God, in the glory of the Son of Man is seen the divine glory. God was
glorified in Him, and therefore hath God glorified Him in Himself: that is,
by His promotion to the Godhead, whose glory was increased in Him, God has
glorified Him in Himself. Already before this He was reigning in the glory
which springs from the divine glory: from henceforth, however, He is
Himself to pass into the divine glory. God hath glorified Him in Himself:
that is, in that nature by which God is what He is. That God may be all in
all: that His whole being, leaving behind the Dispensation by which He is
man, may be eternally transformed into divinity. Nor is the time of this
hidden from us: And God hath glorified Him in Himself, and straightway hath
He glorified Him. At the moment when Judas arose to betray Him, He
signified as present the glory which He would obtain after His Passion
through the Resurrection, but assigned to the future the glory with which
God would glorify Him with Himself. The glory of God is seen in Him in the
power of the Resurrection, but He Himself, out of the Dispensation of
subjection, will be taken eternally into the glory of God, that is, into
God, the all in all.

   43. But what absurd folly is it of the heretics to regard as
unattainable for God that goal to which man hopes to attain, to imply that
He is powerless to effect in Himself that which He is mighty to effect in
us. It is not the language of reason or common sense to say that God is
bound by some necessity of His nature to consult our happiness, but cannot
bestow the like blessings upon Himself. God does not, indeed, need any
further blessedness, for His nature and power stand fast in their eternal
perfection. But although in the Dispensation, that mystery of great
godliness, He Who is God became man, He is not powerless to make Himself
again entirely God, for without doubt He will transform us also into that
which as yet we are not. The final sequel of man's life and death is the
resurrection: the assured reward of our warfare is immortality and
incorruption, not the ceaseless persistence of everlasting punishment, but
the unbroken enjoyment anti happiness of eternal glory. These bodies of
earthly origin shall be exalted to the fashion of a higher nature, and
conformed to the glory of the Lord's body. But what then of God found in
the form of a servant? Though already, while still in the form of a
servant, glorified in the body, shall He not be also conformed to God?
Shall He bestow upon us the form of His glorified body, and yet be able to
do for His own body nothing more than He does for Himself in common with
us? For the most part the heretics interpret the words, Then shall He be
subjected to Him that did subject all things to Himself, that God may be
all in all, as if they meant that the Son is to be subjected to God the
Father, in order that by the subjection of the Son, God the Father may be
all in all. But is there still lacking in God some perfection which He is
to obtain by the subjection of the Son? Can they believe that God does not
already possess that final accession of blessed divinity, because it is
said that by the coming of the fulness of time He shall be made all in all?

   44. To me, who hold that God cannot be known except by devotion, even
to answer such objections seems no less unholy than to support them. What
presumption to suppose that words can adequately describe His nature, when
thought is often too deep for words, and His nature transcends even the
conceptions of thought! What blasphemy even to discuss whether anything is
lacking in God, whether He is Himself full, or it remains for Him to be
fuller than His fulness! If God, Who is Himself the source of His own
eternal divinity, were capable of progress, that He should be greater to-
day than yesterday, He could never reach the time when nothing would be
wanting to Him, for the nature to which advance is still possible must
always in its progress leave some ground ahead still untrodden: if it be
subject to the law of progress, though always progressing it must always be
susceptible of further progress. But to Him, Who abides in perfect fulness,
Who for ever is, there is no fulness left by which He can be made more
full, for perfect fulness cannot receive an accession of further fulness.
And this is the attitude of thought in which reverence contemplates God,
namely, that nothing is wanting to Him, that He is full.

   45. But the Apostle does not neglect to say with what manner of
confession we should bear witness of God. O the depth of the riches both of
the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments,
and His ways past tracing out! Far who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or
who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall
be recompensed unto him? For of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all
things. To Him be the glory for ever and ever(5). No earthly mind can
define God, no understanding can penetrate with its perception to sound the
depth of His wisdom. His judgments defy the searching scrutiny of His
creatures: the trackless paths of His knowledge baffle the zeal of all
pursuers. His ways are plunged in the depths of incomprehensibility:
nothing can be fathomed or traced to the end in the things of God. No one
has ever been taught to know His mind, no one besides Himself ever
permitted to share His counsel. But all this applies to us men only, and
not to Him, through Whom are all things, the Angel of mighty Counsel(6),
Who said, No one knoweth the Son save the Father: neither doth arty one
know the Father save the Son, and him to whom the Son hath willed to reveal
Him(7). It is to curb our own feeble intellect, when it strains itself to
fathom the depth of the divine nature with its descriptions and
definitions, that we must re-echo the language of the Apostle's
exclamation, lest we should attempt by rash conjecture to snatch from God
more than He has been pleased to reveal to us.

   46. It is a recognised axiom of natural philosophy, that nothing falls
within the scope of the senses unless it is subjected to their observation,
as for instance an object placed before the eyes, or an event posterior to
the birth of human sense and intelligence. The former we can see and
handle, and therefore the mind is qualified to pass a verdict upon it,
since it can be examined by the senses of touch and sight. The latter,
which is an event in time, produced or constituted since the origin of man,
falls within the limits in which the discerning sense may claim to pass
judgment, since it is not prior in time to our perception and reason. For
our sight cannot perceive the invisible, since it only distinguishes, the
seen; our reason cannot project itself into the time when it was not,
because it can only judge of that, to which it is prior in time. And even
within these limits, the infirmity which is bound up with its nature robs
it of absolutely certain knowledge of the sequence of cause and effect. How
much less then can it go back behind the time when it had its origin, and
comprehend with its perception things which existed before it in the realms
of eternity?

   47. The Apostle then recognised that nothing can fall within our
knowledge, except it be posterior in time to the faculty of sense.
Accordingly when he had asserted the depth of the wisdom of God, the
infinity of His inscrutable judgments, the secret of His unsearchable ways,
the mystery of His unfathomable mind, the incomprehensibility of His
uncommunicated counsel, he continued, For who hath first given to Him, and
it shall be recompensed unto him again? Far of Him, and through Him, and in
Him are all things. The eternal God is neither subject to limitation, nor
did human reason and intelligence exercise their functions before He had
His being. His whole being is therefore a depth, which we can neither
examine nor penetrate. We say His whole being, not to define it as limited,
but to understand it in its unlimited boundlessness: because of no one has
He received His being, no antecedent giver can claim service from Him in
return for a gift bestowed: for of Him and through Him and in Him are all
things. He does not lack things that are of Him and through Him and in Him.
The Source and Maker of all, Who contains all, Who is beyond all, does not
need that which is within Him, the Creator His creatures, the Possessor His
possessions. Nothing is prior to Him, nothing derived from any other than
Him, nothing beyond Him. What element of fulness is still lacking in God,
which time will supply to make Him all in all? Whence can He receive it, if
outside Him is nothing, and while nothing is outside Him, He is eternally
Himself? And if He is eternally Himself, and there is nothing outside Him,
with what increase shall He be made full, by what addition shall He be made
other than He is? Did He not say, I am and I change not(8)? What
possibility is there of change in Him? What scope for progress? What is
prior to eternity? What more divine than God? The subjection of the Son
will not therefore make God to be all in all, nor will any cause perfect
Him, from Whom and through Whom and in Whom are all causes. He remains God
as He ever was, and He needs nothing further, for what He is, He is
eternally of Himself and for Himself.

   48. But neither is it necessary for the Only-begotten God that He
should change. He is God, and that is the name of full and perfect
divinity. For, as we said before, the meaning of the repeated glorifying,
and the cause of the subjection is that God may be all in all: but it is a
Mystery, not a necessity, that God is to be all in all. Christ abode in the
form of God when He assumed the form of a servant, not being subjected to
change, but emptying Himself; hiding within Himself, and remaining master
of Himself though He was emptied. He constrained Himself even to the form
and fashion of a man, lest the weakness of the assumed humility should not
be able to endure the immeasurable power of His nature. His unbounded might
contracted itself, until it could fulfil the duty of obedience even to the
endurance of the body to which it was yoked. But since He was self-
contained even when He emptied Himself, His authority suffered no
diminution, for in the humiliation of the emptying He exercised within
Himself the power of that authority which was emptied.

   49. It is therefore for the promotion of us, the assumed humanity, that
God shall be all in all. He Who was found in the form of a servant, though
He was in the form of God, is now again to be confessed in the glory of God
the Father: that is, without doubt He dwells in the form of God, in Whose
glory He is to be confessed. All is therefore a dispensation only, and not
a change of His nature; for He abides still in Him, in Whom He ever was.
But there intervenes a new nature, which began in Him with His human birth,
and so all that He obtains is on behalf of that nature which before was not
God, since after the Mystery of the Dispensation God is all in all. It is,
therefore, we who are the gainers, we who are promoted, for we shall be
conformed to the glory of the body of God. Further the Only-begotten God,
despite His human birth, is nothing less than God, Who is all in all. That
subjection of the body, by which all that is fleshly in Him, is swallowed
up into the spiritual nature, will make Him to be God and all in all, since
He is Man also as well as God; and His humanity which advances towards this
goal is ours also. We shall be promoted to a glory conformable to that of
Him Who became Man for us, being renewed unto the knowledge of God, and
created again in the image of the Creator, as the Apostle says, Having put
off the old man with his doings, and put on the new man, which is being
renewed unto the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created
him(9). Thus is man made the perfect image of God. For, being conformed to
the glory of the body of God, he is exalted to the image of the Creator,
after the pattern assigned to the first man. Leaving sin and the old man
behind, he is made a new man unto the knowledge of God, and arrives at the
perfection of his constitution, since through the knowledge of his God he
becomes the perfect image of God. Through godliness he is promoted to
immortality, through immortality he shall live for ever as the image of his
Creator.

BOOK XII.

   1. At length, with the Holy Ghost speeding our way, we are approaching
the safe, calm harbour of a firm faith. We are in the position of men, long
tossed about by sea and wind, to whom it very often happens, that while
great heaped-up waves delay them for a time around the coasts near the
ports, at last that very surge of the vast and dreadful billows drives them
on into a trusty, well-known anchorage. And this, I hope, will befall us,
as we struggle in this twelfth book against the storm of heresy; so that
while we venture out trusty bark therein upon the wave of this grievous
impiety, this very wave may bring us to the haven of rest for which we
long. For while all are driven about by the uncertain wind of doctrine,
there is panic here and danger there, and then again there often is even
shipwreck, because it is maintained on prophetic authority that God Only-
begotten is a creature--so that to Him there belongs not birth but
creation, because it has been said in the character of Wisdom, The Lord
created Me as the beginning of His ways(1). This is the greatest billow in
the storm they raise, this is the big wave of the whirling tempest: yet
when we have faced it, and it has broken without damage to our ship, it
will speed us forward even to the all-safe harbour of the shore for which
we long.

   2. Yet we do not rest, like sailors, on uncertain or on idle hopes:
whom, as they shape their course to their wish, and not by assured
knowledge, at times the shifting, fickle winds forsake or drive from their
course. But we have by our side the unfailing Spirit of faith, abiding with
us by the gift of the Only-begotten God, and leading us to smooth waters in
an unwavering course. For we recognise the Lord Christ as no creature, for
indeed He is none such; nor as something that has been made, since He is
Himself the Lord of all things that are made; but we know Him to be God,
God the true generation of God the Father. All we indeed, as His goodness
has thought fit, have been named and adopted as sons of God: but He is to
God the Father the one, true Son, and the true and perfect birth, which
abides only in the knowledge of the Father and the Son. But this only, and
this alone, is our religion, to confess Him as the Son not adopted but
born, not chosen but begotten. For we do not speak of Him either as made,
or as not born; since we neither compare the Creator to His creatures, nor
falsely speak of birth without begetting. He does not exist of Himself, Who
exists through birth; nor is He not born, Who is the Son; nor can He, Who
is the Son, come to exist otherwise than by being born, because He is the
Son.

   3. Moreover no one doubts that the assertions of impiety always
contradict and resist the assertions of religious faith; and that that
cannot be piously held now which is already condemned as impiously
conceived; as, for instance, the discrepancy and variance which these new
correctors of the apostolic faith maintain between the Spirit of the
Evangelists and that of Prophets; or their assertion that the Prophets
prophesied one thing and the Evangelists preached another, since Solomon
calls upon us to adore a creature, while Paul convicts those who serve a
creature. And certainly these two texts do not seem to agree together,
according to the blasphemous theory, whereby the Apostle, who was trained
by the law, and separated by divine appointment, and spoke through Christ
speaking in him, either was ignorant of the prophecy, or was not ignorant
but contradicted it; and thus did not know Christ to be a creature when he
named Him the Creator; and forbade the worship of a creature, warning us
that the Creator alone is to be served, and saying, Who changed the truth
of God into a lie, and served the creature, passing by the Creator Who is
blessed far ever and ever(2).

   4. Does Christ, Who is God, speaking in Paul, fail to refute this
impiety of falsehood? Does He fail to condemn this lying perversion of
truth? For through the Lord Christ all things were created; and therefore
it is His proper name that He should be the Creator. Does not both the
reality and the title of His creative power belong to Him? Melchisedec is
our witness, thus declaring God to be Creator of heaven and earth: Blessed
be Abraham of God most high, Who created heaven and earth(3). The prophet
Hosea also is witness, saying, I am the Lord thy God, that establish the
heavens and create the earth, Whose hands have created all the host of
heaven(4). Peter too is witness, writing thus, Committing your souls as to
a faithful Creator(5). Why do we apply the name of the work to the Maker of
that work? Why do we give the same name to God and to our fellowmen? He is
our Creator, He is the Creator of all the heavenly host.

   5. Since by the faith of the Apostles and Evangelists these statements
are referred in their meaning to the Son, through Whom all things were
made, how shall He be made equal to the very works of His hands and be in
the same category of nature as all other things? In the first place our
human intelligence repudiates this statement that the Creator is a
creature; since creation comes to exist by means of the Creator. But if He
is a creature, He is both subject to corruption and exposed to the suspense
of waiting, and is subjected to bondage. For the same blessed Apostle Paul
says: For the long expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation
of the sons of God. For the creature was subject to vanity, not of its own
will, but on account of Him Who has made it subject in hope. Because also
the creature itself shall be freed from the slavery of corruption into the
liberty of the glory of the children of God(6). If, therefore, Christ is a
creature, it must needs be that He is in uncertainty, hoping always with a
tedious expectation, and that His long expectation, rather than ours, is
waiting, and that while He waits He is subjected to vanity, and is
subjected through a subjection due to necessity, not of His own will. But
since He is subjected not of His own will, He must needs be also a
bondservant; moreover since tie is a bondservant He must needs also be
dwelling in a corruptible nature. For the Apostle teaches that all these
things belong to the creature, and that, when it shall be freed from these
through a long expectation, it will shine with a glory proper to man. But
what a thoughtless and impious assertion about God is this, to imagine Him
exposed, through the insults which the creature bears, to such mockeries as
that He should hope and serve, and be under compulsion and receive
recognition, and be freed hereafter into a condition which is ours, not
His; while really it is of His gift that we make our little progress.

   6. But our impiety, by the licence of this forbidden language, waxes
apace with yet deeper faithlessness; asserting that since the Son is a
creature it is bound to maintain that the Father also does not differ from
a creature. For Christ, remaining in the form of God, took the form of a
servant; and if He is a creature Who is in the form of God, God can never
be separate from the creature, because there is a creature in the form of
God. But to be in the form of God can only be understood to mean, remaining
in the nature of God   whence also God is a creature, because there is a
creature with His nature. But He Who was in the form of God, did not grasp
at being equal with God, because from equality with God, that is, from the
form of God, He descended into the form of a servant. But He could not
descend from God into man, except by emptying Himself, as God, of the form
of God. But when He emptied Himself, He was not effaced, so as not to be;
since then He would have become other in kind than He had been. For neither
did He, Who emptied Himself within Himself, cease to be Himself; since the
power of His might remains even in the power of emptying Himself; and the
transition into the form of a servant does not mean the loss of the nature
of God, since to have put off the form of God is nothing less than a mighty
act of divine power.

   7. But to be in this way in the form of God is nothing else than to be
equal with God: so that equality of honour is owed to the Lord Jesus
Christ, Who is in the form of God, as He Himself says, That all men may
honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the
Son honoureth not the Father Who sent Him(7). There is never a difference
between things which does not also imply a different degree of honour. The
same objects deserve the same reverence; for otherwise the highest honour
will be unworthily bestowed on those which are inferior, or with insult to
the superior the inferior will be made equal to them in honour. But if the
Son, regarded as a creation rather than a birth, be treated with a
reverence equal to that paid the Father, then we grant no special meed of
honour to the Father, since we charge ourselves with only such reverence
towards Him as is shewn to a creature. But since He is equal to God the
Father, inasmuch as He is born as God from Him, He is also equal to Him in
honour, for He is a Son and not a creature.

   8. This again is a notable utterance of the Father concerning Him: From
the womb, before the morning star I begat Thee(8). Here, as we have often
said already, nothing derogatory to God is implied in the concession to our
weakness of understanding; as though, because He said that He begot Him
from the womb, He were therefore composed of inner and outer parts, which
unite to form His members, and owed Ills being to the same causes within
time to which earthly bodies owe theirs; when in fact He Whose existence is
due to no natural necessities, free and perfect, and eternal Lord of all
nature, in explanation of the true character of the birth of His Only-
begotten, points to power of His own unchangeable nature. For though Spirit
be born of Spirit (consistently, be it remembered, with the true character
of Spirit, through which itself is also Spirit), nevertheless its only
cause for being born lies within those perfect and unchangeable causes. And
though it is from a perfect and unchangeable cause that it is born, it must
needs be born from that cause, in accordance with the true character of
that cause. Now the necessary process of human birth is conditioned by the
causes which operate upon the womb. But as God is not made up of parts, but
is unchangeable as being Spirit, for God is Spirit, He is subject to no
natural necessity working within Him. But since He was telling us of the
birth of Spirit from Spirit, He instructed our understanding by an example
from causes which work among us: not to give an example of the manner of
birth, but to declare the fact of generation; not that the example might
prove Him subject to necessity, but that it might enlighten our mind. If,
therefore, God Only-begotten is a created being, what meaning is there in a
revelation which uses the common facts of human birth to indicate that He
was divinely generated?

   9. For often by means of these members of our bodies, God illustrates
for us the method of His own operations, enlightening our intelligence by
using terms commonly understood: as when He says, Whose hands created all
the host of heaven(9); or again, The eyes of the Lord are upon the
righteous(1); or again, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after
My own heart(2). Now by the heart is denoted the desire, to which David was
well-pleasing through the uprightness of his character; and knowledge of
the whole universe, whereby nothing is beyond God's ken, is expressed under
the term 'eyes;' and His creative activity, whereby nothing exists which is
not of God, is understood by the name of 'hands.' Therefore as God wills
and foresees and does everything, and even in the use of terms denoting
bodily action must be understood to have no need of the assistance of a
body; surely, now, in the statement that He begat from the womb, the idea
is brought forward not of a human origin produced by a bodily act, but of a
birth which must be understood as spiritual, since in the other cases where
members are spoken of, this is done to represent to us other active powers
in God.

   10. Therefore since heart is put for desire, and eyes for sight, and
hands for work achieved,--and yet, without in any way being made up of
parts, God desires and foresees and acts, these same operations being
expressed by the words heart, and eyes, and hand,--is not the meaning of
the phrase that He begat from the womb an assertion of the reality of the
birth? Not that He begat the Son from His womb, just as neither does He act
by means of a hand, nor see by means of eyes, nor desire by means of a
heart. But since by the employment of these terms it is made clear that He
really acts and sees and wills everything, so from the word 'womb' it is
clear that He really begot from Himself Him Whom He begat; not that he made
use of a womb, but that He purposed to express reality. Just in the same
way He does not trill or see or act through bodily faculties, but uses the
names of these members in order that through the services performed by
corporeal forces we may understand the power of forces which are not
corporeal.

   11. Now the constitution of human society does not allow, nor indeed do
the words of our Lord's teaching permit, that the disciple should be above
his master, or the slave rule over his lord; because, in these contrasted
positions, subordination to knowledge is the fitting state of ignorance,
and unconditional submission the appointed lot of servitude. And since it
is the common judgment of all that this is so, whose rashness now shall
induce us to say or think that God is a creature, or that the Son has been
made? For nowhere do we find that our Master and Lord spoke thus of Himself
to His servants and disciples, or that He taught that His birth was a
creation or a making. Moreover, the Father never bore witness to Him as
being aught else but a Son, nor did the Son profess that God was aught else
than His own true Father, assuredly affirming that He was born, not made
nor created, as He says, Every one that loveth the Father, loveth also the
Son Who is born of Him(3).

   12. On the other hand His works in creation are acts of making and not
a birth through generation. For the heaven is not a son, neither is the
earth a son, nor is the world a birth; for of these it is said, All things
were made through Him(4); and by the prophet, The heavens are the works of
Thy hands(5); and by the same prophet, Neglect not the works of Thy
hands(6). Is the picture a son of the painter, or the sword a son of the
smith or the house a son of the architect? These are the works of their
making: but He alone is the Son of the Father Who is born of the Father.

   13. And we indeed are sons of God, but sons because the Son has made us
such. For we were once sons of wrath, but have been made sons of God
through the Spirit of adoption, and have earned that title by favour, not
by right of birth. And since everything that is made, before it was made,
was not, so we, although we were not sons, have been made what we are. For
formerly we were not sons: but after we have earned the name we are such.
Moreover, we have not been born, but made; not begotten, but purchased. For
God purchased a people for Himself, and by this act begot them. But we
never learn that God begot sons in the strict sense of the term. For He
does not say, "I have begotten and brought up My sons," but only, I have
begotten and brought up sons(7).

   14. Yet perchance inasmuch as He says, My firstborn Son Israel(8), some
one will interpret the fact that He said, My firstborn, so as to deprive
the Son of the characteristic property of birth; as though, because God
also applied to Israel the epithet Mine, the adoption of those who have
been made sons was misrepresented as though it were an actual birth, and
therefore the phrase used of Him, This is My beloved Son(9), is not solely
applicable to the birth of God, since the epithet My is (so it is asserted)
shared with those who clearly were not born sons. But that they were not
really born, although they are said to have been born, is shewn even from
that passage where it is said, A people which shall be born, whom the Lord
hath made(1).

   15. Therefore the people of Israel is born, in such wise that it is
made; nor do we take the assertion that it is born as contradictory to the
fact that it is made. For it is a son by adoption, not by generation; nor
is this its true character, but its title. For although the words. My
firstborn are written of it; there is yet a great and wide difference
between My beloved Son, and My firstborn son. For where there is birth,
there we see, My beloved Son; but where there is a choice from among the
nations, and adoption through an act of will, there is My firstborn son.
Here the people is God's, in regard to its character as firstborn; in the
former ease the fact that He is God's, relates to His character as a Son.
Again, in a case of birth the father's ownership comes first, and then his
love; in a case of adoption the primary fact is that the son is made a
firstborn, and then comes the ownership. Thus to Israel, adopted for a son
out of all the peoples of the earth, properly belonged the character of a
firstborn; but to Him alone, Who is born God, properly belongs the
character of a Son. Accordingly there is no true and complete birth where
sonship is imputed rather than real: since it is not doubtful that that
people, which is born into a state of sonship, is also made. But since it
would not have been what it is now become, and inasmuch as its birth is but
a name for its being made, it has no true birth, since it was something
else before it was born. And for this reason it was not before it was born,
that is, before it was made, because that which is a son from among the
nations was a nation before it was a son: and accordingly it is not truly a
son, because it was not always a son. But God Only-begotten was neither at
any time not a Son, nor was He anything before He was a Son, nor is He
Himself anything except a Son. And so He Who is always a Son, has rendered
it impossible for us to think of Him that there was a time when He was not.

   16. For indeed human births involve a previous non-existence, because,
as a first reason, all are born from those, all of whom formerly were not.
For although each one who is born has his origin from one who has been,
nevertheless that very parent, from whom he is born, was not before he was
born. Again, as a second reason, he who is born, is born after that he was
not, for time existed before he was born. For if he is born to-day, in the
time which was yesterday, he was not; and he has come into a state of being
from a state of not being; and our reason enforces that that which is born
to-day did not exist yesterday. And so it remains that his birth, by virtue
of which he is, took place after a state of non-existence; since
necessarily today implies the previous existence of yesterday, so that it
is true of it that there was a time when it was not. And these facts hold
good of the origin of everything relating to man: all receive a beginning,
previously to which they had not been: firstly, as we have explained, in
respect of time, and then in respect of cause And in respect of time indeed
there is no doubt that things which now begin to be, formerly were not; and
this is true also in respect of cause, since it is certain that their
existence is not derived from a cause within themselves. For think over all
the causes of beginnings, and direct your understanding to their
antecedents: you will find that nothing began by self-causation, since
nothing is born by the free act of the parent, but all things are created
what they are through the power of God. Whence also it is a natural
property of each class of things by virtue of actual heredity, that it once
was not and then began to be, beginning after time began, and existing
within time. And while all existing things have an origin later than that
of time, their causes also, in their turn, were once nonexistent, being
born from things which once were not. Even Adam, the first parent of the
human race, was formed from the earth, which was made out of nothing, and
after time, that is to say, after the heaven and earth, and the day and the
sun, moon and stars, and he had no first beginning in being born, and began
to be when he once had not been.

   17. But for God Only-begotten, Who is preceded by no antecedent time,
the possibility is excluded that at some time He was not, since that "some
time" thus becomes prior to Him; and again, the assertion that He was not
involves the potion of time: whence time will not begin to be after Him,
but He Himself will begin to be after time, and, inasmuch as He was not
before He was born, the very period when He was not will take precedence of
Him. Further, He Who is born from Him Who really is, cannot be understood
to have been born from that which was not: since He Who really is, is the
cause of His existing, and His birth cannot have its origin in that which
is not. And therefore since in His case it is not true either in regard of
time that He ever was not, or in regard of the Father, that is, the Author
of His being, that He has come into existence out of nothing, He has left
no possibility with regard to Himself either of His having been born out of
nothing, or of His not having existed before He was born.

   18. Now I am not ignorant that most of those, whose mind being dulled
by impiety does not accept the mystery of God, or who through the strong
influence of a hostile spirit are ready to manifest, under the cover of
reverence, a marl passion for disparaging God, are wont to make strange
assertions in the ears of simple-minded men. They assert that since we say
that the Son always has been, and that He never has been anything which He
has not always been, we are therefore declaring that He is without birth,
inasmuch as He always has been; since, according to the workings of human
reason, that which always has existed cannot possibly have been born: since
(so they urge) the cause of a thing being born, is that something, which
was not, may come into existence, while the coming into existence of
something which was not, means nothing else, according to the judgment of
common sense, than its being born. They may add those arguments, subtle
enough and pleasant to hear;--"If He was born, He began to be; at the time
when He began to be, He was not: and when He was not, it cannot be that He
was." By such proofs let them maintain that it is the language of
reasonable piety to say, "He was not before He was born: because in order
that He might come to be, One Who was not, not One Who was, was born. Nor
did He Who was, require a birth, although He Who was not was born, to the
end that He might come to be."

   19. Now, first of all, men professing a devout knowledge of divine
things, in matters where the truth preached by Evangelists and Apostles
shewed the way, ought to have laid aside the intricate questions of a
crafty philosophy, and rather to have followed after the faith which rests
in God: because the sophistry of a syllogistical question easily disarms a
weak understanding of the protection of its faith, since treacherous
assertion lures on the guileless defender, who tries to support his case by
enquiry into facts, till at last it robs him, by means of his own enquiry,
of his certainty; so that the answerer no longer retains in his
consciousness a truth which by his admission he has surrendered. For what
answer accommodates itself so well to the questioner's purpose, as the
admission on our part, when we are asked, "Does anything exist before it is
born?" that that which is born, did not previously exist? For it is
contrary both to nature and to necessary reason that a thing which already
exists should be born: since a thing must needs be born in order that it
may come to be, and not because it already existed. But when we have made
this concession, because it is rightly made, we lose the certainty of our
faith, and being ensnared we fall in with their impious and unchristian
designs.

   20. But the blessed Apostle Paul, taking precaution against this, as we
have often shewn, warned us to be on our guard, saying: Take heed lest any
man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the
tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according
to Christ, in Whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily(2).
Therefore we must be on our guard against philosophy, and methods which
rest upon traditions of men we must not so much avoid as refute. Any
concession that we make must imply not that we are out-argued but that we
are confused, for it is right that we, who declare that Christ is the power
of God and the wisdom of God, should not flee from the doctrines of men,
but rather overthrow them; and we must restrain and instruct the simple-
minded lest they be spoiled by these teachers. For since God can do all
things, and in His wisdom can do all things wisely, for neither is His
purpose unarmed with power nor His power unguided by purpose, it behoves
those who proclaim Christ to the world, to face the irreverent and faulty
doctrines of the world with the knowledge imparted by that wise
Omnipotence, according to the saying of the blessed Apostle: For our
weapons are not carnal but powerful for God, for the casting down of
strongholds, casting down reasonings and every high thing which is exalted
against the knowledge of God(3). The Apostle did not leave us a faith which
was bare and devoid of reason; for although a bare faith may be most mighty
to salvation, nevertheless, unless it is trained by teaching, while it will
have indeed a secure retreat to withdraw to in the midst of foes, it will
yet be unable to maintain a safe and strong position for resistance. Its
position will be like that which a camp affords to a weak force after a
flight; not like the undismayed courage of men who have a camp to hold.
Therefore we must beat down the insolent arguments which are raised against
God, and destroy the fastnesses of fallacious reasoning, and crush cunning
intellects which hit themselves up to impiety, with weapons not carnal but
spiritual, not with earthly, learning but with heavenly wisdom; so that in
proportion as divine things differ from human, so may the philosophy of
heaven surpass the rivalry of earth.

   21. Accordingly let misbelief abandon its efforts; let it not think,
because it does not understand, that we deny a truth which, in fact, we
alone rightly understand and believe. For while we declare in so many words
that He was born, nevertheless we do not assert that He was ever not
born(3a). For it is not the same thing to be not born and to be born: since
the latter term expresses origin derived from some other, the former origin
derived from none. And it is one thing to exist always, as the Eternal,
without any source of being, and another to be co-eternal with a Father,
having Him for the Source of being. For where a father is the source of
being, there also is birth; and further, where the Source of being is
eternal, the birth also is eternal: for since birth comes from the source
of being, birth which comes from an eternal Source of being must be
eternal. Now everything which always exists, is also eternal. But
nevertheless, not everything which is eternal is also not born; since that
which is born from eternity has eternally the character of having been
born; but that which is not born is ingenerate as well as eternal. But if
that which has been born from the Eternal is not born eternal, it will
follow that the Father also is not an eternal Source of being. Therefore if
any measure of eternity is wanting to Him Who has been born of the eternal
Father, clearly the very same measure is wanting to the Author of His
being; since what belongs in an infinite degree to Him Who begets, belongs
in an infinite degree to Him also Who is born. For neither reason nor
intelligence allows of any interval between the birth of God the Son and
the generation by God the Father; since the generation consists in the
birth, and the birth in the generation. Thus each of these events coincides
exactly with the other; neither took place unless both took place.
Therefore that which owes its existence to both these events cannot be
eternal unless they both are eternal; since neither of the two
correlatives, apart from the other, has any reality, because it is
impossible for one to exist without the other.

   22. But some one, who cannot receive this divine mystery, will say,
"Everything which has been born, once was not; since it was born in order
that it might come into existence."

   23. But does any one doubt that all human beings that have been born,
at one time were not? It is, however, one thing to be born of some one who
once was not, and another to be born of One Who always is. For every state
of infancy, since previously it had no existence, began from some point of
time. And tiffs again, growing up into childhood, still later urges on
youth to fatherhood. Yet the man was not always a father, for he advanced
to youth through boyhood, and to boyhood through original infancy.
Therefore he who was not always a father, also did not always beget: but
where the Father is eternal, the Son also is eternal. And so if you hold,
whether by argument or by instinct, that God, in the mystery of our
knowledge of Whom one property is that He is Father, was not always the
Father of the begotten Son, you hold also, as a matter of understanding and
of knowledge, that the Son, Who was begotten, did not always exist. But if
the property of fatherhood be co-eternal with the Father, then necessarily
also the property of sonship must be co-eternal with the Son. And how will
it square with our language or our understanding to maintain that He was
not before He was born, Whose property it is that He always was what He has
been born.

   24. And so God Only-begotten, containing in Himself the form and image
of the invisible God, in all things which are properties of God the Father
is equal to Him by virtue of the fulness of true Godhead in Himself. For,
as we have shewn in the former books, in respect of power and veneration He
is as mighty and as worthy of honour as the Father: so also, inasmuch as
the Father is always Father, He too, inasmuch as He is the Son, possesses
the like property of being always the Son. For according to the words
spoken to Moses, He Who is, hath sent Me unto you(4), we obtain the
unambiguous conception that absolute being belongs to God; since that which
is, cannot be thought of or spoken of as not being. For being and not being
are contraries, nor can these mutually exclusive descriptions be
simultaneously true of one and the same object: for while the one is
present, the other must be absent. Therefore, where anything is, neither
conception nor language will admit of its not being. When our thoughts are
turned backwards, and are continually carried back further and further to
understand the nature of Him Who is, this sole fact about Him, that He is,
remains ever prior to our thoughts; since that quality, which is infinitely
present in God, always withdraws itself from the backward gaze of our
thoughts, though they reach back to an infinite distance. The result is
that the backward straining of our thoughts can never grasp anything prior
to God's property of absolute existence; since nothing presents itself, to
enable us to understand the nature of God, even though we go on seeking to
eternity, save always the fact that God always is. That then which has both
been declared about God by Moses, that of which our human intelligence can
give no further explanation; that very quality the Gospels testify to be a
property of God Only-begotten; since in the beginning was the Word, and
since the Word was with God, and since He was the true Light, and since God
Only-begotten is in the bosom of the Father(5), and since Jesus Christ is
God over all(6).

   25. Therefore He was, and He is, since He is from Him Who always is
what He is. But to be from Him, that is to say, to be from the Father, is
birth. Moreover, to be always from Him, Who always is, is eternity; but
this eternity is derived not from Himself, but from the Eternal. And from
the Eternal nothing can spring but what is eternal: for if the Offspring is
not eternal, then neither is the Father, Who is the source of generation,
eternal. Now since it is the special characteristic of His being that His
Father always exists, and that He is always His Son, and since eternity is
expressed in the name HE THAT IS, therefore, since He possesses absolute
being, He possesses also eternal being. Moreover, no one doubts that
generation implies birth, and that birth points to one existing from that
time forth, and not to one who does not continue. Furthermore, there can be
no doubt that no one who already was in existence could be born. For no
cause of birth can accrue to Him, Who of Himself continues eternal. But God
Only-begotten, Who is the Wisdom of God, and the Power and the Word of God,
since He was born, bears witness to the Father as the source of His being.
Since He was born of One, Who eternally exists, He was not born of nothing.
Since He was born before times eternal, His birth must necessarily be prior
to all thought. There is no room for the verbal quibble, "He was not,
before He was born." For if He is within the range of our thought, in the
sense that He was not before He was born, then both our thought and time
are prior to His birth; since everything which once was not, is within the
compass of thought and time, by the very meaning of the assertion that it
once was not, which separates off, within time, a period when it did not
exist. But He is from the Eternal, and yet has always been; He is not
ingenerate, yet never was non-existent; since to have always been
transcends time, and to have been born is birth.

   26. And so we confess that God Only-begotten was born, but born before
times eternal: since we must make our confession within such limits as the
express preaching of Apostles and Prophets assigns to us; though at the
same time human thought cannot grasp any intelligible idea of birth out of
time, since it is inconsistent with the nature of earthly beings that any
of them should be born before all times. But when we make this assertion,
how can we reconcile with it, as part of the same doctrine, the
contradictory statement that before His birth He was not, when according to
the Apostle He is God Only-begotten before times eternal? If, therefore,
the belief that He was born before times eternal is not only the reasonable
conclusion of human intelligence, but the confession of thoughtful faith,
then, since birth implies some author of being, and what surpasses all time
is eternal, and whatever is born before times eternal transcends earthly
perception, we are certainly exalting by impious self-will a notion of
human reason, if we maintain in a carnal sense that before He was born He
was not, since He is born eternal, beyond human perception or carnal
intelligence. And again, whatever transcends time is eternal.

   27. For we can embrace all time in imagination or knowledge, since we
know that what is now to-day, did not exist yesterday, because what was
yesterday is not now; and on the other hand what is now, is only now and
was not also yesterday. And by imagination we can so span the past that we
have no doubt that before some city was founded, there existed a time in
which that city had not been founded. Since, therefore, all time is the
sphere of knowledge or imagination, we judge of it by the perceptions of
human reason; hence we are considered to hare reasonably asserted about
anything, "It was not, before it was born," since antecedent time is prior
to the origin of every single thing. But on the other hand, since in things
of God, that is to say, in regard to the birth of God, there is nothing
that is not before time eternal: it is illogical to use of Him the phrase
"before He was born," or to suppose that He Who possesses before times
eternal the eternal promise, is merely (in the language of the blessed
Apostle(7)) in hope of eternal life, which God Who cannot lie has promised
before times eternal, or to say that once He was not. For reason rejects
the notion that He began to exist after anything, Who, so we must confess,
existed before times eternal.

   28. We may grant that for anything to be born before times eternal is
not the way of human nature, nor a matter which we can understand; and yet
in this we believe God's declarations about Himself. How then does the
infidelity of our own day assert, according to the conceptions of human
intelligence, that that had no existence before it was born, which the
Apostolic faith tells us was, in some manner inconceivable to the human(8)
understanding, always born, or in other words existed before times eternal?
For what is born before time is always born; since that which exists before
time eternal, always exists. But what has always been born, cannot at any
time have had no existence; since non-existence at a given time is directly
contrary to eternity of existence. Moreover, existing always excludes the
idea of not having existed always. And the idea of not having existed
always being excluded by the postulate that He has always been born, we
cannot conceive the supposition that He did not exist before He was born.
For it is obvious that He Who was born before times eternal, has always
been born, although we can forth no positive conception of anything having
been born before all time. For if we must confess (as is clearly necessary)
that He has been born before every creature, whether invisible or
corporeal, and before all ages and times eternal, and before all
perception, Who always exists through the very fact that He has been so
born;--then by no manner of thought can it be conceived that before He was
born, He did not exist; since He Who has been born before times eternal, is
prior to all thought, and we can never think that once He did not exist,
when we have to confess that He always exists.

   29. But our opponent cunningly anticipates us with this carping
objection. "If," be urges, "it is inconceivable that He did not exist
before He was born, it must be conceivable that One Who already existed was
born."

   30. I will ask this objector in reply, whether he remembers my calling
Him anything else than born, and whether I did not say that existence
before times eternal and birth have the same meaning in the case of Him
that was, For the birth of One already existing is not really birth, but a
self-wrought change through birth, and the eternal existence of One Who is
born means that in His birth He is prior to any conception of time, and
that there is no tooth for the mind to suppose that at any time He was
unborn. And so an eternal birth before times eternal is not the same as
existence before being born. But to have been born always before times
eternal excludes the possibility of having had no existence be fore birth.

   31. Again, this same fact excludes the possibility of saying that He
existed before He was born; because He Who transcends perception transcends
it in every respect. For if the notion of being born, though always
existing, transcends thought, it is equally impossible that the notion that
He did not exist before He was born should be a subject of thought. And so,
since we must confess that to have been always born means for us nothing
beyond the fact of birth, the question whether He did or did not exist
before He was born cannot be determined under our conditions of thought;
since this one fact that He was born before times eternal ever eludes the
grasp of our thought. So He was born and yet has always existed; He Who
does not allow anything else to be understood or said about Him than that
He was born. For since He is prior to time itself within which thought
exists (since time eternal is previous to thought), He debars thought from
determining concerning Him, whether He was or was not before He was born;
since existence before birth is incompatible with the idea of birth, and
previous non-existence involves the idea of time. Therefore, while the
infinity of times eternal is fatal to any explanation involving the idea of
time--that is to say, to the notion that He did not exist; His birth
equally forbids any that is inconsistent with it,--that is to say, the
notion that He existed before He was born. For if the question of His
existence or His non-existence can be determined under our conditions of
thought, then the birth itself must be after time; for He Who does not
always exist must, of necessity, have begun to be after some given point of
time.

   32. Therefore the conclusion reached by faith and argument and thought
is that the Lord Jesus both was born and always existed: since if the mind
survey the past in search of knowledge concerning the Son, this one fact
and nothing else, will be constantly present to the enquirer's perception,
that He was born and always existed. As therefore it is a property of God
the Father to exist without birth, so also it must belong to the Son to
exist always through birth. But birth can declare nothing except that there
is a Father and the title Father nothing else except that there is a birth.
For neither those names nor the nature of the case, will allow of any
intermediate position. For either He was not always a Father, unless there
was always also a Son; or if He was always a Father, there was always also
a Son; since whatever period of time is denied to the Son, to make His
sonship non-eternal, just so much the Father lacks of having been always a
Father: so that although He was always God, nevertheless He cannot have
been also a Father for the same infinity during which He is God.

   33. Now the declarations of impiety even go so far as not only(9) to
ascribe to the Son birth in time, but also generation in time(9a) to the
Father; because the process of generation and the birth take place within
one period.

   34. But, heretic, do you consider it pious and devout to confess that
God indeed always existed, yet was not always Father? For if it is pious
for you to think so, you must then condemn Paul of impiety, when he says
that the Son existed before times eternal(1): you must also accuse Wisdom
itself, when it bears witness concerning itself that it was founded before
the ages: for it was present with the Father when He was preparing the
heaven. But in order that you may assign to God a beginning of His being a
Father, first determine the starting-point at which the times must have
begun. For if they had a beginning, the Apostle is a liar for declaring
them to be eternal. For you all are accustomed to reckon the times from the
creation of the sun and the moon, since it is written of them, And let them
be far signs and for times and for years(2). But He Who is before the
heaven, which in your view is even before time, is also before the ages.
Nor is He merely before the ages, but also before the generations of
generations which precede the ages. Why do you limit things divine and
infinite by what is perishable and earthly and narrow? With regard to
Christ, Paul knows of nothing except an eternity of times. Wisdom does not
say that it is after anything, but before everything. In your judgment the
times were established by the sun and the moon; but David shews that Christ
remains before the sun, saying, His is name is before the sun(3). And lest
you should think that the things of God began with the formation of this
universe, he says again, And for generations of generations before the
moon(4). These great men counted worthy of prophetic inspiration look down
upon time: every opening is barred whereby human perception might penetrate
behind the birth, which transcends times eternal. Yet let the faith of a
devout imagination accept this as limit of its speculations, remembering
that the Lord Jesus Christ, God Only-begotten, is born in a manner to be
acknowledged as a perfect birth, and in the reverence paid to His divinity,
not forgetting that He is eternal.

   35. But we are accused of lying, and together with us the doctrine
preached by the Apostle is attacked, because while it confesses the birth,
it asserts the eternity of that birth: the result being that, while the
birth bears witness to an Author of being, the assertion of eternity in the
mystery of the divine birth transgresses the limits of human thought. For
there is brought forward against us the declaration of Wisdom concerning
itself, when it taught that it was created in these words The Lord created
Me for the beginning of His ways(5).

   36. And, O wretched heretic! you turn the weapons granted to the Church
against the Synagogue, against belief in the Church's preaching, and
distort against the common salvation of all the sure meaning of a saving
doctrine. For you maintain by these words that Christ is a creature,
instead of silencing the Jew, who denies that Christ was God before eternal
ages, and that His power is active in all the working and teaching of God,
by these words of the living Wisdom! For Wisdom has in this passage
asserted that it had been created for the beginning of the ways of God and
for His works from the commencement of the ages, lest perchance it might be
supposed that it did not subsist before Mary; yet has not employed this
word 'created' in order to signify that its birth was a creation, since it
was created for the beginning of God's ways and for His works. Nay rather
lest any one should suppose that this beginning of the ways, which is
indeed the starting-point for the human knowledge of things divine, was
meant to subordinate an infinite birth to conditions of time, Wisdom
declared itself established before the ages. For, since it is one thing to
be created for the beginning of the ways and for the works of God, and
another to be established before the ages, the establishing was intended to
be understood as prior to the creation; and the very fact of its being
established for God's works before the ages was intended to point to the
mystery of the creation; since the establishing is before the ages, but the
creation for the beginning of the ways and for the works of God is after
the commencement of the ages.

   37. But now, test the terms 'creation' and 'establishing' should be an
obstacle to belief in the divine birth, these words follow, Before He made
the earth, before He made firm the mountains, before all the hills He begat
Me(6). Thus He is begotten before the earth, Who is established before the
ages; and not only before the earth, but also before the mountains and
hills. And indeed in these expressions, since Wisdom speaks of itself, more
is meant than is said. For all objects which are used to convey the idea of
infinity must be of such a kind as to be subsequent in point of time to no
single thing and to no class of things. But things existing in time cannot
possibly be fitted to indicate eternity; because, from the very fact that
they are posterior to other things, they are incapable of suggesting the
thought of infinity as a beginning, themselves having their own beginning
in time. For what wonder is it, that God should have begotten the Lord
Christ before the earth, when the origin of the angels is found to be prior
to the creation of the earth? Or why should He, Who was said to be begotten
before the earth, be also declared to be born before the mountains, and not
only before the mountains but also before the hills; the hills being
mentioned, as an afterthought, after the mountains, and reason requiring
that there should be a world before mountains could exist? For such reasons
it cannot be supposed that these words were used merely in order that He
might be understood to exist prior to hills and mountains and earth, Who
surpasses by the eternity of His own infinity things which are themselves
prior to earth and mountains and hills.

   38. But this divine discourse has not left our understandings
unenlightened, since it explains the reason of the phrase in what follows:-
-God made the regions, both the uninhabitable parts and the heights which
are inhabited under the heaven. When He was preparing the heaven, I was
with Him; and when He was setting apart His own seat. When above the winds
He made the clouds huge in the upper air, and when He placed securely the
springs under the heaven, and when He made firm the foundations of the
earth, I was by Him, joining all things together(7). What period in time is
here? Or how far are the conceptions of human intelligence allowed to reach
beyond the infinite birth of God Only-begotten? By means of things whose
creation we can conceive in our mind, it is not possible to understand the
generation of Him, Who is prior to all these things; and hence we cannot
maintain that He came, indeed, first in time, yet was not infinite,
inasmuch as the only privilege bestowed upon Him was a birth prior to
things temporal. For in that case, since they, by their constitution, are
subject to the conditions of time, He, though prior to them all, would be
equally subject to conditions of time, because their creation within time
would define the time of His birth, namely that He was born before then;
for that which is antecedent to temporal things stands in the same relation
to time as they.

   39. But the voice of God, our instruction in true wisdom, speaks what
is perfect, and expresses the absolute truth, when it teaches that itself
is prior not merely to things of time, but even to things infinite. For
when the heaven was being prepared, it was present with God. Is the
preparation of the heaven an act of God within time; so that an impulse of
thought suddenly surprised His mind, as though it had been previously dull
and inert. and after the fashion of men He sought for materials and
instruments for fashioning the heaven? Nay, the prophet's conception of the
working of God is far different, when He says, By the word of the Lord were
the heavens established, and all their power by the breath of His mouth(8).
Yet the heavens needed the command of God, that they might be established;
for their arrangement and excellence in this firm unshaken constitution,
which they display, did not arise from the blending and commingling of some
kind of matter, but from the breath of the mouth of God. What then does it
mean, that Wisdom begotten of God was present with Him, when He was
preparing the heaven? For neither does the creation of heaven consist in a
preparation of material, nor does it consist with the nature of God to
linger over preliminary thoughts concerning His work. For everything, which
there is in created things, was always with God: for although these things
in respect of their creation have a beginning, nevertheless they have no
beginning in respect of the knowledge and power of God. And here the
prophet is our witness, saying, O God, Who hast made all things which shah
be(9). For although things future, in so far as they are to be created, are
still to be made, yet to God, with Whom there is nothing new or sudden in
creation they have already been made; since there is a dispensation of
times for their creation, and in the prescient working of the divine power
they have already been made. Here, therefore, Wisdom, in teaching that it
was born before the ages, teaches that it is not merely prior to things
which have been created, but is even co-eternal with what is eternal, to
wit, with the preparation of the heaven, and the setting apart of the abode
of God. For this abode was not set apart at the time when it was actually
made, for setting apart and fashioning an abode are different things. Nor
again was the heaven formed at the time when it was (ideally) prepared, for
Wisdom was with God both when He prepared and when He set apart the heaven.
And afterwards it was fashioning the heaven by the side of God Who formed
it: it proves its eternity by its presence with Him as He prepares; it
reveals its functions, when it fashions by the side of God Who forms.
Therefore, in the passage before us it said that it was begotten even
before the earth and mountains and hills, because it meant to teach that it
was present at the preparation of the heaven; in order that it might shew
that, even when the heaven was being prepared, this work was already
finished in the counsel of God, for to Him there is nothing new.

   40. For the preparation for creation is perpetual and eternal: nor was
the frame of this universe actually made by isolated acts of thought, in
the sense that first the heaven was thought of, and afterwards there came
into God's mind a thought anti plan concerning the earth; that He thought
of each part singly, so that first the earth was spread out as a plain, and
then through better counsels was made to rise up in mountains, and yet
again was diversified with hills, and in the fourth place was also made
habitable even in the heights; that so the heaven was prepared an I the
abode of God set apart, and huge clouds in the upper air held the
exhalations caught up by the winds; then afterwards sure springs began to
run under the heaven, and, last of all, the earth was made firm with strong
foundations. For Wisdom declares that it is prior to all these things. But
since all things under the heaven were made through God, and Christ was
present at the fashioning of the heaven, and preceded even the eternity of
the heaven which was prepared, this fact does not allow us to think in
respect to God of disconnected thoughts on details, since the whole
preparation of these things is co-eternal with God. For although, as Moses
teaches, each act of creation had its proper order;--the making the
firmament solid, the laying bare of the dry land, the gathering together of
the sea, the ordering of the stars, the generation by the waters and the
earth when they brought forth living creatures out of themselves; yet the
creation of the heaven and earth and other elements is not separated by the
slightest interval in God's working, since their preparation had been
completed in like infinity of eternity in the counsel of God.

   41. Thus, though Christ was present in God with these infinite and
eternal decrees, He has granted to us nothing more than a knowledge of the
fact of His birth; in order that, just as an apprehension of the birth is
the means which leads to faith in God, so also the knowledge of the
eternity of His birth might avail to sustain piety; since neither reason
nor experience allow us to speak of any but an eternal Son as proceeding
from a Father Who is eternal.

   42. But perhaps the word 'creation,' and its employment of Him,
disturbs us. Certainly the word 'creation' would disturb us, if birth
before the ages and creation for the beginning of the ways of God and for
His works were not affirmed of Him. For birth cannot be understood to
denote creation, since the birth precedes causation, but the creation takes
place through causation. For before the preparation of the heaven and
before the commencement of the ages was He established, Who was created for
the beginning of the ways of God and for His works. Is it possible that to
be created for the beginning of the ways of God and for His works, means
the same as to be born before all things? No: one of these ideas relates to
time employed in action, but the other bears a sense which has no relation
to time.

   43. Or perhaps you wish the assertion that He was created for the works
to be understood in the sense that He was created on account of the works;
in other words that Christ was created for the sake of performing the
works. In that case He exists as a servant and a builder of the universe,
and was not born the Lord of Glory; He was created for the service of
forming the ages, and was not always the beloved Son and the King of the
ages. But, although the general understanding of Christians contradicts
this impious thought of yours, recognising that it is one thing to be
created for the beginning of the ways of God and for His works, and another
to be born before the ages, yet this very same passage thwarts your purpose
of falsely asserting that the Lord Christ was created, on account of the
formation of the universe, since it shews that God the Father is the Maker
and Former of the universe, and shews it convincingly, since Christ Himself
was present fashioning by the side of Him Who was forming all things. But,
while all Scripture was designed to speak of the Lord Jesus Christ as the
Creator of the universe, Wisdom, to destroy all occasion for impiety, has
here declared that though God the Father was the Constructor of the
universe, yet itself was not absent from Him while constructing it, since
it was present with Him even when He was preparing it beforehand, and that
when the Father formed the universe, Wisdom also was fashioning it by the
side of Him Who formed it, and was present with Him even when He prepared
it. Whence Wisdom would have us understand that it was not created on
account of God's works(1), by the very fact that it had been present at the
eternal preparation of works yet to be, and proves Scripture not to be
false, by the fact that it fashioned the universe by the side of God when
He formed it.

   44. Learn at last, heretic, from the revelation of Catholic teaching,
what is the meaning of the saying that Christ was created for the beginning
of the ways of God and for His works; and be taught by the words of Wisdom
itself the folly of your impious dulness. For thus it begins: If I shall
declare unto you the things which are done every day, I will remember to
recount those things which are from of old(2). For Wisdom had said before,
You, O men, I entreat, and I utter my voice to the sons of men. O ye
simple, understand subtilty, moreover ye unlearned, apply your heart(3);
and again, Through Me kings reign, and mighty men decree justice. Through
Me princes are magnified, and through Me despots possess the earth(4); and
again, I walk in the ways of equity, and move in the midst of the paths of
justice; that I may divide substance to those that love Me, and fill their
treasures with good things(5). Wisdom is not silent about its daily work.
And firstly entreating all men, it advises the simple to understand
subtilty, and the unlearned to apply their heart, in order that a zealous
and diligent reader may ponder the different and separate meanings of the
words. And so it teaches that by its methods and ordinances all success,
all attainment of knowledge or fame or wealth, is achieved: it shews that
within itself are contained the reigns of kings and the prudence of the
mighty, and the famous works of princes, and the justice of despots who
possess the earth; that it moreover does not mingle with wicked deeds and
has no part in acts of injustice; and that all this is done by Wisdom in
order that, by taking part in every work of equity and justice, it may
supply to those that love it, a wealth of eternal goods anti incorruptible
treasures. Therefore Wisdom, after declaring that it will relate the things
which are done every day, promises that it will also be mindful to recount
the things which are from of old. And now what blindness is it, to think
that things were performed before the beginning of the ages, which are
expressly declared to date merely from the beginning of the ages! For every
work among those which date from the beginning of the ages is itself
posterior to that beginning: but on the contrary, things which are before
the beginning of the ages, precede the ordering of the ages, which are
later than they. And so Wisdom, after declaring that it is mindful to speak
of the things which date from the beginning of the ages, says, The Lord
created Me for the beginning of His ways for His works, by these words
denoting things performed from the date of the beginning of the ages. Thus
Wisdom's teaching concerns not a generation declared to precede the ages,
but a dispensation which began with the ages themselves.

   45. We must also enquire what is the meaning of the saying that God,
born before the ages, was again created for the beginning of the ways of
God and for His works. This surely is said because where there is a birth
before the commencement of the ages, there is the eternity of an endless
generation: but where the same birth is represented as a creation from the
commencement of the ages, for the ways of God and for His works, it is
applied as the creative cause to the works and to the ways. And first,
since Christ is Wisdom, we must see whether He is Himself the beginning of
the way of the works of God. Of this, I think, there is no doubt; for He
says, I am the way, and, No man cometh to the Father except through Me(6).
A way is the guide of those who go, the course marked out for those who
hasten, the safeguard of the ignorant, a teacher, so to speak, of things
unknown and longed for. Therefore He is created for the beginning of the
ways, for the works of God; because He is the Way and leads men to the
Father. But we must seek for the purpose of this creation, which is from
the commencement of the ages. For it is also the mystery of the last
dispensation, wherein Christ was again created in bodily form, and declared
that He was the way of the works of God. Again, He was created for the ways
of God from the commencement of the ages, when, subjecting Himself to the
visible form of a creature, He took the form of a created being.

   46. And so let us see for what ways of God, and for what works of God,
Wisdom was created from the commencement of the ages, though born of God
before all ages. Adam heard the voice of One walking in Paradise. Do you
think that His approach could have been heard, had He not assumed the guise
of a created being? Is not the fact, that He was heard as He walked, proof
that He was present in a created form? I do not ask in what guise He spoke
to Cain and Abel and Noah, and in what guise He was near to Enoch also,
blessing him. An Angel speaks to Hagar, and certainly He is also God. Has
He the same form, when He appears like an Angel, as He has in that nature,
by virtue of which He is God? Certainly the form of an Angel is revealed,
where afterwards mention is made of the nature of God. But why should I
speak of an Angel? He comes as a man to Abraham. Under the guise of a man,
in the shape of that created being, is not Christ present in that nature,
which He possesses as being also God? A man speaks, and is present in the
body, and is nourished by food; and yet God is adored. Surely He Who was an
Angel is now also man, in order to save us from the assumption that any of
these diverse aspects of one state, that of the creature, is His natural
form as God. Again, He comes to Jacob in human shape, and even grasps him
for wrestling; and He takes hold with His hands, and struggles with His
limbs, and bends His flanks, and adopts every movement and gesture of ours.
But again He is revealed, this time to Moses, and as a fire; in order that
you might learn to believe that this created nature was to provide Him with
an outward guise, not to embody the reality of His nature. He possessed, at
that moment, the power of burning, but He did not assume the destructive
property which is inherent in the nature of fire, for the fire evidently
burned and yet the bush was not injured.

   47. Glance over the whole course of time, and realist in what guise He
appeared to Joshua the son of Nun, a prophet bearing His name, or to
Isaiah, who relates that he saw Him, as the Gospel also bears witness(7),
or to Ezekiel, who was admitted even to knowledge of the Resurrection, or
to Daniel, who confesses the Son of Man in the eternal kingdom of the ages,
or to all the rest to whom He presented Himself in the form of various
created beings, for the ways of God and for the works of God, that is to
say, to teach us to know God, and to profit our eternal state. Why dues
this method, expressly designed for human salvation, bring about at the
present time such an impious attack upon His eternal birth? The creation,
of which you speak, dates from the commencement of the ages; but His birth
is without end, and before the ages. Maintain by all means that we are
doing violence to words, if a Prophet, or the Lord, or an Apostle, or any
oracle whatever has described by the name of creation the birth of His
eternal divinity. In all these manifestations God, Who is a consuming fire,
is present, as created, in such a manner that He could lay aside the
created form by the same power by which He assumed it, being able to
destroy again that which had come into existence merely that it might be
looked upon.

   48. But that blessed and true birth of the flesh conceived within the
Virgin the Apostle has named both a creating and a making, for then there
was born both the nature and form of our created being. And without doubt
in his view this name belongs to Christ's true birth as a man, since he
says, But when the fulness of the time came, God sent His Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, in order that He might redeem those who are
under the law, that we might obtain the adoption of sons(8). And so He is
God's own Son, Who is made in human form and of human origin; nor is He
only made but also created, as it is said: Even as the truth is in Jesus,
that ye put away according to your former manner of life, that old man,
which becomes corrupt according to the lusts of deceit. However, be ye
renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put ye on that new man, which is
created according God(9). So the new man is to be put on Who has been
created according to God. For He Who was Son of God was born also Son Man.
This was not the birth of the divinity, but the creating of the flesh; the
new Man taking the title of the race, and being created according to God
Who was born before the ages. And how the new man was created according to
God, he explains in what follows, adding, in righteousness, and in
holiness, and in truth(1). For there was no guile in Him; and He has been
made unto us righteousness and sanctification, and is Himself the Truth.
This, then, is the Christ, created a new man according to God, Whom we put
on.

   49. If, then, Wisdom, in saying that it was mindful of the things which
have been performed since the beginning of the ages, said that it was
created for the works of God and for the ways of God; and yet, while saying
that it was created, taught that it was established before the ages, lest
we should suppose that the mystery of that created form, so variously and
frequently assumed, involved some change in its nature;--for although the
firmness with which it was established would not allow of any disturbance
that could overthrow it, yet, lest the establishment might seem to mean
something less than birth, Wisdom declared itself to be begotten before all
things:--if this is so, why is the term 'creation' now applied to the birth
of that which was both begotten before all things, and also established
before the ages? Because that which was established before the ages was
created anew froth the commencement of the ages for the beginning of the
ways of God and for His works. In this sense must we understand the
difference between creation from the commencement of the ages and that
birth which precedes the ages and all things. Impiety at least has not this
excuse, that it can plead error as the cause of its profanity.

   50. For although the weakness of the understanding might hinder the
perceptions of a man devoutly disposed, so that, even after this
explanation, he might fail to grasp the meaning of "creation,"
nevertheless, even the letter of the Apostle's saying, when he applies(2)
the term "making" to a true birth, should have sufficed for a sincere, if
not intelligent, belief, that the term "creation" was designed to conduce
to a belief in generation. For when the Apostle was minded to assert the
birth of One from one Parent, that is to say, the birth of the Lord from a
virgin without a conception due to human passions, he clearly had a
definite purpose in calling Him "made of a woman," Whom he knew and had
frequently asserted to have been born. He desired that the 'birth' should
point to the reality of the generation, and the 'making' should testify to
the birth of One from one Parent; because the term 'making' excludes the
idea of a conception by means of human intercourse, it being expressly
stated that He was made of a virgin, though it is equally certain that He
was born and not made. But see, heretic, how impious you are. No sentence
of prophet, or evangelist, or apostle has said that Jesus Christ was
created from God, rather than born from Him: yet you deny the birth. and
assert the creation, but not according to the Apostle's meaning, when he
said that He was made, lest there should be any doubt that He was born as
One from one Parent. You make your assertion in a most impious sense,
implying that God did not derive His being by way of birth conveying
nature; although a creature would rather have come into being out of
nothing. This is the primary infection in your unhappy mind, not that you
term birth a creating, but that you adapt your faith to the idea of
creation instead of birth. And yet while it would mark a poor intellect,
still it would not mark a man entirely undevout, if you had called Christ
created, in order that men might recognise His impossible birth from God,
as being that of One from One.

   51. But none of these phrases does a firm apostolic faith permit. For
it knows in what dispensation of time Christ was created, and in what
eternity of times He was born. Moreover, He was born God of God, and the
divinity of His true birth and perfect generation is not doubtful. For in
relation to God we acknowledge only two modes of being, birth and eternity:
birth, moreover, not after anything, but before all things, so that birth
only bears witness to a Source of being, and does not predicate any
incongruity between the offspring and the Source of being. Still, by common
admission, this birth, because it is from God, implies a secondary position
in respect to the Source of being, and yet cannot be separated from that
Source, since any attempt of thought to pass beyond acceptance of the fact
of birth, must also necessarily penetrate the mystery of the generation.
And so this is the only pious language to use about God: to know Him as
Father, and with Him to know also Him, Who is the Son born of Him. Nor
assuredly are we taught anything concerning God, except that He is the
Father of God the Only-begotten and the Creator. So let not human weakness
overreach itself; and let it make this only confession, in which alone lies
its salvation--that, before the mystery of the Incarnation, it is ever
assured, concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, of this one fact that He had
been born.

   52. For my part, so long as I shall have the power by means of this
Spirit Whom Thou hast granted me, Holy Father, Almighty God, I will confess
Thee to be not only eternally God, but also eternally Father. Nor will I
ever break out into such folly and impiety, as to make myself the judge of
Thy omnipotence and Thy mysteries, nor shall this weak understanding
arrogantly seek for more than that devout belief in Thy infinitude and
faith in Thy eternity, which have been taught me. I will not assert that
Thou wast ever without Thy Wisdom, and Thy Power, and Thy Word, without God
Only-begotten, my Lord Jesus Christ. The weak and imperfect language, to
which our nature is limited, does not dominate my thoughts concerning Thee,
so that my poverty of utterance should choke faith into silence. For
although we have a word and wisdom and power of our own, the product of our
free inward activity, yet Thine is the absolute generation of perfect God,
Who is Thy Word and Wisdom and Power; so that He can never be separated
from Thee, Who in these names of Thy eternal properties is shewn to be born
of Thee. Yet His birth is only so far shewn as to make manifest the fact
that Thou art the Source of His being; yet sufficiently to confirm our
belief in His infinity, inasmuch as it is related that He was born before
times eternal.

   53. For in human affairs Thou hast set before us many things of such a
sort, that though we do not know their cause, yet the effect is not
unknown; and reverence inculcates faith, where ignorance is inherent in our
nature. Thus when I raised to Thy heaven these feeble eyes of mine, my
certainty regarding it was limited to the fact that it is Thine. For seeing
therein these orbits where the stars are fixed, and their annual
revolutions, and the Pleiades and the Great Bear and the Morning Star, each
having their varied duties in the service which is appointed them, I
recognise Thy presence, O God, in these things whereof I cannot gain any
clear understanding. And when I view the marvellous swellings of Thy sea, I
know that I have failed to comprehend not merely the origin of the waters
but even the movements of this changeful expanse; yet I grasp at faith in
some reasonable cause, although it is one that I cannot see, and fail not
to recognise Thee in these things also, which I do not know. Furthermore,
when in thought I turn to the earth, which by the power of hidden agencies
causes to decay all the seeds which it receives, quickens them when
decayed, multiplies them when quickened, and makes them strong when
multiplied; in all these changes I find nothing which my mind can
understand, yet my ignorance helps towards recognising Thee, for though I
know nothing of the nature that waits on me, I recognise Thee by actual
experience of the advantages I possess. Moreover, though I do not know
myself, yet I perceive so much that I marvel at Thee the more because I am
ignorant of myself. For without understanding it, I perceive a certain
motion or order or life in my mind when it exercises its powers; and this
very perception I owe to Thee, for though Thou deniest the power of
understanding my natural first beginning, yet Thou givest that of
perceiving nature with its charms. And since in what concerns myself I
recognise Thee, ignorant as I am, so recognising Thee I will not in what
concerns Thee cherish a feebler faith in Thy omnipotence, because I do not
understand. My thoughts shall not attempt to grasp and master the origin of
Thy Only-begotten Son, nor shall my faculties strain to reach beyond the
truth that He is my Creator and my God.

   54. His birth is before times eternal. If anything exist which precedes
eternity, it will be something which, when eternity is comprehended, still
eludes comprehension. And this something is Thine, and is Thy Only-
begotten; no portion, nor extension, nor any empty name devised to suit
some theory of Thy mode of action. He is the Son, a Son born of Thee, God
the Father, Himself true God, begotten by Thee in the unity of Thy nature,
and meet to be acknowledged after Thee, and yet with Thee, since Thou art
the eternal Author of His eternal origin. For since He is from Thee, He is
second to Thee; yet since He is Thine, Thou art not to be separated from
Him. For we must never assert that Thou didst once exist without Thy Son,
test we should be reproaching Thee either with imperfection, as then unable
to generate, or with superfluousness after the generation. And so the exact
meaning for us of the eternal generation is that we know Thee to be the
eternal Father of Thy Only-begotten Son, Who was born of Thee before times
eternal.

   55. But, for my part, I cannot be content by the service of my faith
and voice, to deny that my Lord and my God, Thy Only-begotten, Jesus
Christ, is a creature; I must also deny that this name of 'creature'
belongs to Thy Holy Spirit, seeing that He proceeds from Thee and is sent
through Him, so great is my reverence for everything that is Thine. Nor,
because I know that Thou alone art unborn and that the Only-begotten is
born of Thee, will I refuse to say that the Holy Spirit was begotten, or
assert that He was ever created. I fear the blasphemies which would be
insinuated against Thee by such use of this title 'creature,' which I share
with the other beings brought into being by Thee. Thy Holy Spirit, as the
Apostle says, searches and knows Thy deep things, and as Intercessor for me
speaks to Thee words I could not utter; and shall I express or rather
dishonour, by the title 'creature,' the power of His nature, which subsists
eternally, derived from Thee through Thine Only-begotten? Nothing, except
want belongs to Thee, penetrates into Thee; nor can the agency of a power
foreign and strange to Thee measure the depth of Thy boundless majesty. To
Thee belongs whatever enters into Thee; nor is anything strange to Thee,
which dwells in Thee through its searching power.

   56. But I cannot describe Him, Whose pleas for me I cannot describe. As
in the revelation that Thy Only-begotten was born of Thee before times
eternal, when we cease to struggle with ambiguities of language and
difficulties of thought, the one certainty of His birth remains; so I hold
fast in my consciousness the truth that Thy Holy Spirit is from Thee and
through Him, although I cannot by my intellect comprehend it. For in Thy
spiritual things I am dull, as Thy Only-begotten says, Marvel not that I
said unto thee, ye must be barn anew. The Spirit breathes where it will,
and thou hearest the voice of it; but dost not know whence it comes or
whither it goes. So is every one who is barn of water and of the Holy
Spirit(3). Though I hold a belief in my regeneration, I hold it in
ignorance; I possess the reality, though I comprehend it not. For my own
consciousness had no part in causing this new birth, which is manifest in
its effects. Moreover the Spirit has no limits; He speaks when He will, and
what He will, and where He will. Since, then, the cause of His coming and
going is unknown, though the watcher is conscious of the fact, shall I
count the nature of the Spirit among created things, and limit Him by
fixing the time of His origin? Thy servant John says, indeed, that all
things were made through the Son(4), Who as God the Word was in the
beginning, O God, with Thee. Again, Paul recounts all things as created in
Him, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible(5). And, while he
declared that everything was created in Christ and through Christ, he
thought, with respect to the Holy Spirit, that the description was
sufficient, when he called Him Thy Spirit. With these men, peculiarly Thine
elect, I will think in these matters; just as, after their example, I will
say nothing beyond my comprehension about Thy Only-begotten, but simply
declare that He was born, so also after their example I will not trespass
beyond that which human intellect can know about Thy Holy Spirit, but
simply declare that He is Thy Spirit. May my lot be no useless strife of
words, but the unwavering confession of an unhesitating faith!

   57. Keep, I pray Thee, this my pious faith undefiled, and even till my
spirit departs, grant that this may be the utterance of my convictions: so
that I may ever hold fast that which I professed in the creed of my
regeneration, when I was baptized in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Let me, in short, adore Thee our Father, and Thy Son together with
Thee; let me win the favour of Thy Holy Spirit, Who is from Thee, through
Thy Only-begotten. For I have a convincing Witness to my faith, Who says,
Father, all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine(6), even my Lord Jesus
Christ, abiding in Thee, and from Thee, and with Thee, for ever God: Who is
blessed for ever and ever. Amen.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF II/IX, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The
Electronic
Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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